


A Promising Start

by andersam5, waffleguppies



Category: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Shaiman/Shaiman & Wittman/Greig
Genre: Adventure, Gen, The Chocolate Room, The Great Glass Elevator, The Mixing Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:14:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24558247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andersam5/pseuds/andersam5, https://archiveofourown.org/users/waffleguppies/pseuds/waffleguppies
Summary: The day after the Golden Ticket tour, Mr. Wonka is eager to show Charlie the rest of his factory, and to begin training him for his new role. However, he quickly realizes that he's facing an even greater challenge- he has to convince Charlie's mother that the whole place isn't simply a gigantic accident waiting to happen. No easy feat, given Sarah Bucket's sensible reservations, and the chaotic nature of the factory itself.With Mr. Wonka leading the way, something crazy's bound to happen- and before they know it, the trio have a big problem on their hands...
Comments: 21
Kudos: 22





	1. Pancakes & Promises

Night had fallen over the town, and set on the weirdest day Sarah Bucket had ever had. She was sitting in an enormous bay window on the top floor of the massive chocolate factory that had shadowed their home for decades, gazing down at the town below. If she squinted, she could see their tiny shack from here, dark and empty.

The rest of the Bucket family had gone to bed hours ago, exhausted from the whirlwind of activity that had broken loose the moment Charlie had shown up with the most curious man Sarah had ever seen, and proudly told her that this factory was now their new home. That Mr. Willy Wonka had made an offer, and that Charlie had won. Grandpa Joe had tried to explain it to her, but she had to admit she’d been too overwhelmed to take in much detail.

The buzz of thought and theory in her head had refused to die down all through the evening, making sleep impossible. At last, she’d given up, and she could only think to try and walk it off, to slip out of the penthouse and find this wide window in the hall outside.

Looking out over the view without really seeing it, she had just been contemplating what on Earth she was going to tell Mrs. Walinsky tomorrow, when a pleasant _ding!_ rang out behind her, followed by the sound of elevator doors.

Footsteps, soft pads on the velvet carpet. Sarah turned, and the dark figure making its way towards her stopped dead and let out a small, startled noise, clutching at their chest for a moment before they straightened their shoulders, cleared their throat and stepped out into the light.

Willy Wonka, even at this late hour of the night after a busy day, still looked as if he had just had a good cup of coffee. His eyes were wide awake, ready with that glint of mystery and mischief.

“Ah! Good evening, Mrs. Bucket.” He gave a little half-bow. “I didn’t expect anyone to be up here. Would you believe, I’d already forgotten my new neighbors!”

Sarah was silent, and Mr. Wonka’s hand briefly squeezed the purple dome of his cane as if it were a stress ball. "I, uh, hope everything is to your liking."

“Oh, it’s- it’s wonderful.” Sarah hurried to assure him, because it _was_ wonderful _,_ or seemed that way, even if she did feel as if she and her family had been dropped onto the surface of an alien planet that also happened to resemble a luxury hotel that smelled of chocolate all the time. The gigantic rooms were impersonal and sparkling new, and their décor was… well, it was certainly interesting. She put her cardigan down in the first room they were shown into in a sort of daze, and she hadn’t been able to find it again since.

"Oh, brilliant!" His smile practically beamed in the dark, as bright as that purple orb at the end of his striped cane.

"I believe, in all the hullabaloo, I never had a chance to properly introduce myself." He was next to her now, giving maybe a quarter-bow. "But I'm rather sure you've heard of me."

“Yes, of course.” Sarah was smiling, uncertain. She was almost positive that they’d shaken hands, earlier, somewhere in the whirlwind of the evening, but she could barely remember a thing about it. Probably it was only a few hours ago, but it felt like something that happened in the distant past. Maybe it felt the same to him, although she had a feeling he was used to this kind of chaos. He looked as if he thrived on it.

She didn’t exactly know what to do in response to a bow. She had never curtseyed in her life. Not to mention, there was something about him…

“Mr. Wonka,” she said, to cover her confusion. “Joe- Charlie’s grandpa explained... a little... about all this, but I’m not sure I-”

"Long, terribly boring story short-" He bumped his cane on the floor, and the thing sprang up an impossible amount, only for him to catch it round the middle. "Your wonderful boy Charlie is now my new apprentice, and, when he’s ready..." He gestured, with a smoothness so natural it was as if he breathed it, down at the factory immediately below them.

"This will all be his. The factory, my empire, everything. Sure, we loved and lost some friends along the way, but I'm sure they will all be fine... what matters is, that boy of yours-" His gaze fixed on her again. "He has exactly what I was looking for. I would have made the transition for you all easier if I could, but I'm afraid it’s been quite the day."

What _was_ it that was nagging at her? The more she looked at him, the more Sarah couldn’t help feeling as if she was missing something, something she should have fallen in on at once. It was such a distracting conviction that she almost couldn’t follow what he was saying. Luckily his words were staggering enough to force her to collect her thoughts.

“I- your _apprentice?”_

"Oh, yes!" Mr. Wonka beamed.

His smile weakened, and he seemed be considering something, but the next moment he evidently decided to move past it. "Oh yes, fresh blood to, uh... I mean, a fresh mind, I-" He made a frustrated jazzy pantomime in the air.

"I needed a successor." He gave up, staring past her out of the window. Through the colored glass, the moonlight shone purple on his face, and for a moment, Sarah could have sworn he looked familiar.

And that did it. All of a sudden, she was somewhere else, stepping in from the cold street to see another darkened window and purple-tinted moon, to the jangle of a shop bell. Dead on her feet after her shift, a few minutes shy of six, and the man turning from the window-

_You're just in time- I was about to shut up shop. What can I get you?_

The same hawkish nose, the same intense eyes. The same _voice._ All that was missing were the dowdy little spectacles and the drab shop-coat. Sarah snapped back to the present and stared at him in disbelief.

“I know you. _”_ She advanced an incredulous step and made a movement as if she meant to twitch his ridiculous hat from his head, only held back by her sheer shock. The impulse didn’t make any sense at all, but then neither did anything else right now. As she stepped forwards, Mr. Wonka instinctively grabbed the brim of his hat. Her eyes were only level with his chin, but they met his worried look as he leaned back, clutching his cane defensively.

“I _know_ you. That candy shop across the road... the whole time… that was _you!”_

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, my dear lady." Her eyes were very much like Charlie’s. Mr. Wonka couldn't meet them, and chose to look back out the window.

True, some of the Oompa-Loompas had poked fun at how he'd have to get used to being back in the world, but confronting a _mother-_ the bane of every child who wanted to buy one of his bars- felt like jumping into the deep end a little too quick.

“Oh, no, don’t you ‘my dear lady’ me,” Sarah insisted. By this point, she had practically cornered him in the large bay window. “It was you, all right. You sold me Charlie’s birthday Wonka bar two days ago!” It was hard to try and glean some meaning from someone’s expression when they wouldn’t look at you, but she was too bewildered to do anything but press on, push for answers. “Why on Earth would you go to all that- what _for,_ I mean- _why?”_

"You were- he was- well, I'd wish you'd told me sooner you were Charlie's mother!"

Come to think of it, he should have put the pieces together when he saw how she had paid for it mostly in pennies. And-

"That doesn't answer my question, Mr. Wonka-"

Oh, that scolding voice, the hard reality in it and the threat of no dessert after supper- Mr. Wonka really wondered why they didn't make horror movies about mothers.

He wasn't proud to think of it, but he broke.

"I needed an heir, alright?! Someone with imagination and drive, who creates something out of nothing and never stops dreaming, someone who does it purely for the sake of creation-" his voice rose as his posture straightened "-and not someone who would stab me in the back after being my friend for thirty years over a MARSHMALLOW RECIPE-"

He choked when he saw her face, and lowered back onto his heels, clearing his throat and needlessly straightening his tie.

Sarah took a step back as he raised his voice. Despite everything, she felt a surge of pride to hear Mr. Wonka describe her son in such glowing words, and under ideal circumstances she would have agreed with him to the letter, but his face stopped her. As he twitched at his neat silk tie, something warned her that he was off somewhere in his mind, staring not at her or anything in the room but directly into some deep, unpleasant mental pit… and it wasn’t a good idea to try to follow.

She didn’t understand him at all, and of course that left her worried and uncertain, but she’d lived with worry and uncertainty for long enough to know that you could cope with it, if you had to. If other people needed you to. Right now, Charlie needed her to cope with this… bizarre situation, the lack of answers and her sense of disquiet about the whole crazy, astonishing thing.

No, she didn’t think she could understand this man, but she was determined that she would keep up with him, for Charlie’s sake.

“I’m sorry. I- didn’t mean to accuse you of anything, it’s just… everything’s happened very fast.”

Her words seemed to lasso him back into reality, and he finally put his hand down. He continued as if absolutely nothing had happened.

"Suppose it's been awhile since I've had to adjust my pace. I do apologize again, we had to cut some corners, as the load of demand the contest brought upon us took us quite by surprise. Tomorrow, I'll be escorting Charlie on a proper overview of the factory, and I suppose if you would like, you may tag along. We also apparently have to talk to the media tomorrow..." Sarah followed Mr. Wonka’s gaze to the Chocolate News teams still camped outside the factory gates, alongside a smaller but still sizeable army of reporters.

"The email and snail-mail requests are knee deep in the receiving room right now, and if I can't stem them, I'm sure I'll lose some mailroom Loompas to-" He paused, looking up as if the brim of his hat would give him inspiration. "Whatever the paper equivalent of Davy Jones is."

 _I have to go to work tomorrow._ Sarah opened her mouth, then hesitated. She would never ordinarily have dreamed of asking Mrs. Walinsky for time off on less than a day’s notice- if that had even seemed like an option, she would have accompanied Charlie on his Golden Ticket trip herself, in a heartbeat. On the other hand, this wasn’t ordinary. Nothing about this was ordinary.

She would just have to cope with Mrs. Walinsky, too. Tomorrow was Saturday. On Monday, she would _have_ to go back to work- assuming she still had a job- and Charlie, of course, had school. Two days, and by then, she promised herself, she would have puzzled out the right thing to do.

“Charlie’s over the moon about all this,” she said, quietly. “He went to bed hours ago, but I can’t imagine he’s asleep. I’d better go check on him- he needs his rest or he won’t be up for anything tomorrow.” This wasn’t strictly true- Sarah knew her boy well enough to know it would take more than a sleepless night or two- or six, or a hundred- to make him pass up another chance to explore the factory. Wild horses wouldn’t stop him.

Mr. Wonka breathed a laugh as he set both hands atop the dome of his cane. "I know the feeling. If you need anything, Mrs. Bucket, feel free to call on Perdia- you know her, that orange-haired assistant of mine, the one Grandma Josephine took against so strongly- have you managed to talk her out of the bathroom yet, by the way?”

“Josephine? Yes, um, she’s-”

“Excellent news! Anyway, Perdia will be happy to accommodate you." He pulled a pocket-watch from his coat, gold with a _W_ engraved on the cover, checked the time, then returned it. "I suppose I should be getting some rest as well."

He glanced out the window once more.

"Mars sure looks lovely tonight."

And with that, he tipped his hat to her.

“Goodnight,” said Sarah, although it wasn’t particularly clear if he even heard her. She thought he inclined his head in response as he vanished down the dark hallway, and a little later the melodic _dinng!_ of the elevator and swish of the doors told her he was gone.

Letting herself back into the penthouse, she bit her lip and wrapped her arms together as she stopped in the doorway. She had no idea what to make of Mr. Wonka, so far. That he was determined to be friendly, seemed pretty self-evident, but how far could she trust it? How far could she trust _any_ of this? Sarah had learned and seen over and over again in her life that if something seemed far too good to be true, it usually was. For the sake of her family, she couldn’t just walk into this whole thing blinded by how grand, how _lucky_ it all seemed. It wouldn’t be lucky, if this mercurial, eccentric stranger just up and changed his mind about the whole thing tomorrow. It would be the furthest thing from lucky- it would hurt Charlie terribly.

She turned, navigating the vast room by the light of the purple-tinted moon. She still had no idea where she’d left her cardigan, but at least she was one-hundred-percent certain where she’d left her son.

They had the entire floor to themselves, the whole place styled like the kind of apartment she'd only seen in the windows of real estate showrooms. There was a living room- she'd never had a living room- and a kitchen that actually had four working burners and a refrigerator.

Everyone had their own room now. Sarah pushed the thoughts away, knowing if she mused on this... _gift_ any longer she would become overwhelmed again.

Charlie’s room was purple, set up with all the things boys his age liked. There was a desk for writing, a bookshelf of stories, even a set of toy cars on the shelves. All these wonders, and she still caught the last few seconds of flurry as Charlie frantically shut off his flashlight, shoved his notebook under his pillow, and flopped back down into the covers.

“Charlie...”

No answer, and a conspicuous lack of movement, as if a certain someone was holding their breath. Smiling, she sat down on the edge of his bed, in much the same way she’d perch herself on the arm of the chair he slept in at home, to tuck him in or tell him a story.

“Charlie Bucket, I know you’re awake.”

The covers flipped as Charlie emerged, gasping for breath a little. He'd had a good bath, and his hair was lighter when you got the dirt out of it. The pajamas that had been left for him were a size too big, giving the impression he was submerged in a sea of purple and gold stripes.

"Oh, hi, Mom-"

She could see part of the notebook sticking out from under his pillow.

“New notebook?” She knew he often used the books they garnered for his schoolwork for his drawings, his odd inventions- for definite non-educational purposes. Charlie never hid things as well as he thought he did- not that he often tried. He was as bright as a firework, but he didn’t have a sneaky bone in his body. This book was bound in bright purple, catching the light as she clicked the bedside lamp on.

“I thought you’d be tired out.”

"A little," Charlie admitted, as he sat up. "But then I keep thinking about all the things I can make now, and I just get too excited!"

She could tell he was beginning to meet his match though, as the allure of a soft mattress -instead of a chair that had already lived at least three lifetimes before it arrived at the Buckets- was a powerful force.

“Well,” she said, briskly, “a little bird told me Mr. Wonka wants to show you around properly tomorrow, so you’d better get some sleep now while you can. From what your grandpa told me about how your tour went today, we’re going to need to stay on our toes.”

Joe, whose stories usually had a touch of the fantastic and a heavy helping of the completely incredible, had been oddly light on details even when pressed... and the details he _had_ given, Sarah hadn’t known what to make of at all. Yet another mystery, to add to the pile.

Gently, she pulled Charlie’s notebook from between the pillows, and put it on the bedside table. She tapped it, with a wry grin. “Now, come on- pen, please. You don’t want to get ink on these nice new sheets.”

Reluctantly, he handed over his pen. He lay back, and Sarah pulled the covers over him.

"Mom? I love you."

Whatever her own misgivings, Sarah was still so glad that he could _be_ so excited, that he could always look to tomorrow with nothing but hope and excitement. Her brave boy.

She ruffled his hair, then kissed his forehead.

“I love you too, Charlie.”

* * *

Sarah Bucket woke up feeling more rested then she had in years. Normally, she slept in Charlie’s chair while he was at school, or a small hammock in the back shed, the draftiest spot in the house, but today she found herself waking up in a sea of blankets and soft pillows. She had to wonder if she was still dreaming, if everything before had been a dream. If it was, she was sleeping too long, and would be late for work.

On the hook on the closet door were her clothes from the day before, cardigan included. They had been washed, smelling vaguely of lavender, and the hole in the pocket of her cardigan had been mended. In a daze, moving mostly by habit, she pulled them on.

She was just setting off to go wake Charlie, when there was a knock at the penthouse’s front door. Hurrying across the huge main room, winding between sofas and at one point hurdling a small, weirdly-placed side table, she made it to the door. If they stayed here any length of time, she was definitely going to have to rearrange the furniture to be a little less of an obstacle course, although most of it looked far too heavy to budge. She had no idea what to do with so much _room._

Slightly out of breath, she opened the door.

Standing there was Mr. Wonka, poised and prim and proper as always. He was in a different suit today, Violet velvet tailcoat with a loudly-patterned vest, cream-colored pants and wingtip shoes. He was wearing a bowtie today, to which he gave a cheeky adjustment, before beaming brightly.

"Ah! Good morning, Mrs. Bucket!" He leaned to the side, seeing she was the only one awake, and clicked his pocket-watch open.

"Oh, my apologies for being early, I still have this silly thing set to central Oklahoma time. Mind if we come in?"

Before Sarah could answer, Mr. Wonka pushed himself in, followed by Perdia and a pair of other red-headed assistants, pushing carts of breakfast food and a vase of beautiful flowers.

"Big day ahead, best to start it with a great breakfast... in the words of my good associate, Mr. Tony the Tiger." He stood by the dining table, helping his assistants set up a spread of chocolate chip pancakes, buttered toast and oatmeal with sprinkled sugar. When Sarah arrived at his side, he plucked a flower from the vase, offering it like a gentleman.

"Flower, Mrs. Bucket?"

She took it, mostly out of surprise. A fresh rose, petals the color of new butter, it was cool and light in her hand.

“Thank you, I...”

“Mom?” Charlie appeared in the doorway of his room, sleepy-eyed and struggling on a dressing-gown that might have fitted two of him. His face lit up as he saw them, the table and the breakfast that was now more or less laid.

"Charlie!"

"Good morning, Mr. Wonka!" The boy nearly tripped over the edge of the gown as he scurried in, immediately reaching for a pancake.

"Ah-ah, not until you're dressed," warned Sarah, too focused on Charlie to see Perdia elbow Mr. Wonka in the knee to bring his thoughts back to earth. He gave a pouty frown down at his assistant, before he realized Charlie was looking at him expectantly.

The fact was, Charlie’s new dressing-gown, meant for an average-sized eleven-year-old, made it very clear exactly how small the boy was, and how skinny. It wasn’t exactly a revelation for Mr. Wonka, but it was distinct enough now to be a little heartbreaking. He coughed.

“Uh, what she said."

With this incentive, Charlie disappeared almost supernaturally fast, although not before Sarah caught him for a quick hug (and to make sure he left the pancake on the plate where it belonged) The three Loompas, having finished setting the table, vanished just as speedily.

“Thank you,” she called after them, uncertainly, and Perdia, the last one to slip out the door, responded with a wide friendly grin and a wink.

“Why-” she started to ask, turning back to Mr. Wonka. She stopped, mostly because he had moved again and wasn’t where she’d expected him to be standing at all. This seemed to be his habit, never stopping in the same place for more than a moment.

She couldn’t exactly think of how to phrase her questions, so it was probably for the best. Instead, she busied herself with pouring a glass of water from a jug for her rose, going to set it down somewhere safe.

“Will you be having breakfast with us, Mr. Wonka?” she asked, tentatively.

He'd already seated himself at the table. He was about to answer, when his eyes widened, and he slid out of the chair and crossed to her in one fluid motion.

"Wait-wait-wait!" He plucked the rose from her hand. "No, no water, it’s not meant for that."

He looked at her with an expectant smile, which fell when she only replied with a confused expression. "Watch."

He plucked a petal and opened his mouth, popping it in. His face contorted and he coughed, making a childish _"Bleh_ _hh_ _h!"_ sound as he spat the petal onto his spare hand. He straightened, staring at the rose.

"Ah. My mistake. This is a real one. I forgot I..."

He looked from the rose to Sarah, and slowly set the flower back into the water.

"Hope you like strawberry jam, that’s what we brought today," he said, as if nothing had happened, returning to his seat.

“Come on, Mom!” Charlie was back, towing her towards the table, and before she could catch her balance she found herself in a chair, with Charlie between her and Mr. Wonka. He’d chosen one of the newer sweaters that had been laid out for him, a greyish-purple knit that should have fit a boy his age but instead hung off his slim shoulders. His pants were new too, cuffed properly, but he still wore his old shoes. Probably, the ones in his room were too big.

The food was delicious. Sarah couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a really satisfying meal, let alone one where she’d been able to eat as much as she wanted. Out of sheer habit she kept half an eye on Charlie, to make sure he was eating properly too. Not that she had to worry- Charlie had never had chocolate-chip pancakes before in his life, and he was clearly happy to make up for lost time.

“Mom, what about Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine?” he said, stopping mid-bite. “And Grandma Georgina and Grandpa George?”

“I’ll take some in to them later,” she told him. “Nobody else’s up yet, Charlie. Your grandpa’s tired out from yesterday- he’ll probably sleep for a week.”

"The Loompas will take care of anything they need. As for Grandpa Joe, my head of security will be happy to help him back into his old job, should he want it."

Mr. Wonka had helped himself to oatmeal, sipping something that looked like one of those fancy Starbucks drinks one of the higher-maintenance patrons at the dry-cleaners might have, except his seemed to have twice the usual amount of whipped cream. The plastic cup had his full name on it in fancy purple and green script, with copious quantities of glitter sticking to it.

"If you thought yesterday was big, today is going to be _ginormous."_

"Is it going to be as… as…" Charlie, trying to be polite, searched for a word.

"As much of a catastrophe? Oh, no," finished Mr. Wonka. "Just do what you did yesterday, stick close, and you'll be absolutely fine."

“Wait, wait a minute, what do you mean, a catastrophe?” Sarah looked from one to the other, alarmed. “What exactly happened yesterday?”

Charlie and Mr. Wonka exchanged looks, before Charlie looked into his food. Mr. Wonka straightened his jacket.

 _I s_ _uppose she was going to hear about it anyway,_ he thought.

"We had a few... Incidents, yesterday. Nothing serious. The other children, I'm afraid, were not very good listeners."

Sarah, on the other hand, was. She was a good enough listener to tell an Incident with a capital I when she heard one, and she was certainly a good enough listener to tell when a ‘nothing serious’ came served with a massive dose of ‘probably.’

“What kind of… Incidents?”

They told her.

It took a while. Sarah didn’t contribute much, mostly because she could hardly believe what she was hearing. There were several points where she had to ask both of them to slow down, so she could process the information before they dropped another bombshell on her. Chocolate rivers, blueberries, obstacle courses, worker squirrels, chocolate on television. The explanation, which had to be stopped and restarted several times due to Sarah’s bewildered questions or Mr. Wonka and Charlie excitedly talking over each other, lasted long after the pancakes and toast were completely gone. Once it finally ended, it was quite a while before she realized she was still holding her teacup aimlessly in mid-air, and set it down.

“But, you know what they say; no harm, no foul,” finished Mr. Wonka, cheerfully.

“Mr. Wonka, whoever ‘they’ are, I don’t think they’d say that about this!” she managed. “It sounds like these children were seriously injured, if not- and- and Charlie _saw_ all this?”

“Demonstration is the best education?” said Mr. Wonka, a little less cheerfully. Sarah stood up, putting a reassuring hand on Charlie’s shoulder.

“Mr. Wonka, can I speak to you for a moment?” she said, as steadily as she could. “Alone?”

"I, uh-"

_"Now?"_

Mr. Wonka looked to Charlie, then slowly rose from his chair. Following after her, he was yanked into the kitchen the moment they were out of Charlie’s line of sight. Reflexively, he grabbed the brim of his hat to keep it from falling.

"Mrs. Bucket-" he tried to start.

Sarah had pressed her fingers to her temples, as if she was trying to prevent her head from coming off. Looking up sharply at the sound of his voice, she stopped him with a hand.

“Mr. Wonka, I’m- I- I need a moment.” She tried to breathe, and fought herself to a point where she could go on. “You’re telling me all of this happened yesterday in this factory of yours and now you want us- you want him to go _back?_ If something like that happened to Charlie-” She couldn’t even say it. Her voice faltered, and she stopped, biting her lip into a thin line, collecting herself.

For the first time, she could see he was a little off-balance, staring off in the distance for a moment. He reached out a hand, seemed to play chicken with the thought of setting it on her shoulder, then decided against it, setting it back atop his cane.

"Mrs. Bucket, I can assure you, all the children are still alive and- "

_Well, not ‘well.’_

"...alive. Anything that happened to them was their own undoing. I cannot stress enough that Charlie was a model kid during the whole affair, and was never anywhere close to getting hurt, I wouldn't have allowed it-"

“But you ‘allowed it’ with the others! How do you think _their_ parents feel? And he’s just a child, Mr. Wonka, _I_ know Charlie is a sensible boy but you couldn’t have known he would stick to your rules! Or-”

Or could he? Sarah stopped herself short, yet again thinking of that weird purple twilight, the jangle of a shop bell. For a reason she couldn’t have explained, she felt a tiny bit less frantic.

"Mrs. Bucket." Mr. Wonka’s voice, calm and measured, with an energy that commanded the attention of the whole kitchen, cut through her thoughts.

"I'm assuming you must have watched the opening ceremonies yesterday."

She had, in a crowd with her fellow dry-cleaners, huddled around a television set so old the screen was maybe the size of a shoebox. She'd barely been able to hear over her colleagues riffing on the other children, but she’d still been proud as a mother could be at Charlie’s stumbling attempt to talk to the press.

"Allow me to direct your attention to one Mr. Beauregarde." Mr. Wonka raised two fingers, a shredded slip of a business card pincered between them.

"One of four parents who joined us yesterday, whom I did my research on. Former actor in a beach-body sitcom, fell from grace after only one season. Several failed attempts to break back into the industry, misguided movie roles, advertising stunts. He really only came back onto the scene behind his daughter, Violet, who’s been starring in their 'family vlogs' since she was two years old."

He flippantly tossed the strip of card away.

"I would like to think that young Violet’s undoing wasn't solely of her own engineering. But then there's Charlie. Charlie Bucket. The boy whose mother works, what was it, three jobs? Who takes care of all four grandparents in the stead of a man who worked in a toothpaste factory by day and the theater by night... Well, I think it isn't just luck that Charlie is where he is now."

Now it was Sarah who couldn’t hold his gaze. She looked away, into the huge, brand-new kitchen, looking but seeing nothing of it. The hard, inescapable realities of her life, her daily struggle to keep everyone safe and fed and together, these things were _hers,_ alone, to keep as best as she could. She never wanted Charlie to know how much of a struggle it really was, and maybe the thing pained her the most was that to some extent, of course he knew. He was just a child. Worrying about where the next meal was coming from was supposed to be _her_ job, not his.

Sarah never wanted to burden the people she loved, and to hear a stranger with no reason to care state these same facts so baldly and calmly felt like a frightening intrusion. Mr. Wonka had done his research. With all the resources at his fingertips, he must have looked into the lives of all five children- and moreover, in Charlie's case, it seemed he’d been literally just across the street for _weeks._ God alone knew why, but he knew as much about her as-

She turned.

“Mr. Wonka, can you… promise me he’ll be safe today? No more...” She waved a hand, in a shade of the way he’d waved his. _“Incidents?”_

"Mrs. Bucket."

Mr. Wonka straightened, with one of the first serious faces she'd seen out of the man.

"I promise to do absolutely everything in my power to keep Charlie safe today. You have my word."

He offered a hand.

She looked hard at him, trying to size him up. There was a sincerity in his voice that she couldn’t deny. As flippant as he usually sounded, right now he seemed completely and utterly in earnest.

“Alright,” she said, at last, and took it.

His handshake was firm, and the moment their hands let go his face brightened, as if a switch had been clicked.

"Right then!" He turned on his heel, heading back for the dining room. "So much time, so little to do- Charlie?"

The boy looked up, seeming surprised and relieved when he saw his smile.

"Are you ready to go?"

"Yes please, Mr. Wonka!" He bounded from his chair.

"Good lad! Now grab your notebook, the Glass Elevator awaits!"


	2. Honey & Hesitance

Today, as soon as the polished doors of the Great Glass Elevator closed behind the three of them, it started to descend. Slowly at first, then faster, so that bright lights and half-glimpsed sights blurred together and whizzed past Charlie's nose as he pressed it eagerly to the glass.

Sarah stood nearer to the center of the compact glass box, one hand on Charlie's shoulder. For something that looked so fragile, the movement of the Elevator was smooth, and stable as a rock.

"Where are we going first?" The question came out of Charlie like a small explosion, as if he simply couldn't keep it in another second.

"Well, let’s see here..."

Mr. Wonka was in his element, unable to take his eyes off Charlie’s grin. He'd forgotten how much more _fun_ it was to travel by Elevator, and every smile or exclamation of wonder made his heart soar. He loved his factory, and he was so glad Charlie loved it as much as he did.

"Dh-dh-dh..." He walked his fingers up the wall of buttons. "Well, I'm sure we could take some _small_ stops before we see the Oompa-Loompas’s dorms and my office and Administration and Marketing and all that other boring stuff- though Marketing DOES have a waterslide in it... oh, _nuts."_ Mr. Wonka sighed, arms crossed and chin propped in his hand.

"I simply can’t decide. What do you think, Charlie?"

Charlie craned up on his tiptoes to see as many of the little buttons as possible, tracing some of them gently with his fingers as he read.

TOFFEE-APPLE ORCHARD, said one.

THE ROCK-CANDY MINE, said another. Charlie drew a diagonal line with his finger, through MECHANICAL CLOUDS and WHIZZDOODLES and HUNDREDS & THOUSANDS & MILLIONS & BILLIONS and finally-

“THE BEES?” he read, puzzling. “There’s a room for… bees?”

"Ah! The Bee Room!" Mr. Wonka tapped his cane on the floor in recognition. "That's where my worker bees, well, work! Suppose I am due to stop by there-" He glanced at Sarah. "And they would never tear anything limb from limb, I assure you... except maybe a good club sandwich, but then again, anyone would-"

"Why do you have bees, Mr. Wonka?"

"Well, it’s good for the environment, Charlie." He smiled. "High in antioxidants, useful for a hundred and one recipes… Oh, and hard honey candies. Have you ever had one?"

"No, sir, Mr. Wonka."

"Well then, no time like the present! Press away!"

Charlie grinned, and pressed the button with a satisfying _click._ The Elevator slowed and stopped.

"Hang on," advised Mr. Wonka, and before either Bucket could look (and find nothing to hang on _to)_ the Elevator moved forwards, or rather, sideways.

"Whoah!" Charlie laughed as they started to pick up speed.

"It can go diagonally, too." Mr. Wonka beamed down at him, a hand on Charlie’s shoulder to keep him steady. Sarah, who had no such support, let out a sharp involuntary squeak as she slid against the opposite side of the Elevator.

"Careful, Mrs. Bucket!" Mr. Wonka seemed to remember her, and set his other hand at her shoulder. Just as she found her footing, the whole thing swerved hard again, rounding a bend as the whole Elevator shot out of a narrow opening and straight across the mouth of a much larger chasm. Through the glass Sarah saw brick archways and a tangled spaghetti of spotless brass pipes, and just for a moment, she caught a glimpse of the chocolate river swirling far below.

"Is that the river from yesterday?" Charlie asked, pointing down.

"Yep! Pure milk _siocled."_ Mr. Wonka kissed his fingers like a Frenchman, a mismatch to the Welsh word. "Runs through the factory, with tributaries to the rooms that need it. Chocolate-dipped nuts, chocolate-dipped almonds, chocolate-dipped chocolate- Oh!" He dropped to one knee, pointing as they moved through an arch. "And there's the Brighton Rock striping room."

"Why Brighton specifically? Don't candy canes also have stripes?" asked Sarah.

"Oh we have a regular candy-striping room," Mr. Wonka said, head bobbing side to side. "The Brighton room just smells more like the seaside."

Sarah smiled at that, despite herself. Then she squeaked again, as they dropped straight downwards in a heartbeat, making her stomach flip like a rubber ball.

The Elevator corkscrewed gently in a full circle as it whisked through the jumble of pipes, missing each by a hairsbreadth on its track, and dropped into a long, pinkish-lit corridor, slowing to meet the foundation of gears and brakes waiting for it.

With a soft _ding!_ the doors slid open.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please make sure you’ve grabbed all belongings and personal effects, thank you for riding," Mr. Wonka beamed, before striding out. He ushered them through a door, and they found themselves in a small room with yellow walls, patterned like honeycomb. Charlie slowed, spinning a small circle in place as he took everything in.

"Is this it?" asked Sarah.

"It never is, Mom," Charlie grinned, taking her hand.

Mr. Wonka was at the steel door on the opposite wall, punching in a musical code. "Stay close, Buckets, no wandering until I've introduced you properly, and remember, when in doubt, it’s 'Your Majesty.' Now, Charlie, Mrs. Bucket, allow me to introduce you to the Hive."

The door opened, sunlight overpowering the fluorescents.

The smell of honey and fresh cut grass hit their noses. The inside was like a small conservatory, carpeted in trees and flowers. The trees seemed yellowish in color, and on closer inspection Sarah could see that they were made from honeycomb. The walls holding up the skylight were the same.

The sound of buzzing hung in the air, musical like a song. Several Oompa-Loompas were about in beekeeper gear, harvesting honey from one of the honey trees.

"Whoah..." Charlie breathed. He was grinning so wide, Sarah was sure his cheeks were going to get worn out by the end of the day.

Mr. Wonka had walked over to speak to the nearest Loompa, who was harvesting from one of the smaller trees.

"Why is this one... green?" Sarah asked.

"Apple-flavored honey," Mr. Wonka explained, dipping a honeycomb and tasting.

"How do you get green honey?" asked Charlie.

"Green bees, of course," said Mr. Wonka, as he passed the dripping comb.

“Of course,” murmured Sarah. Charlie broke the comb in half and held out a gooey piece to her.

“It’s fantastic, Mom!” he assured her. “It tastes just like real apples!” There was already a dab of green honey on the tip of his nose, and Sarah had to fight the urge to reach for her handkerchief. Practical to a fault she might be, but she also remembered just enough of being a child herself, in that moment, to refrain from scrubbing Charlie’s nose clean in front of his hero.

She took a cautious bite of honeycomb instead. Charlie was right. It tasted like real apples- not the usual sharp sour artificial taste, but like a ripe green apple, right off the tree. It was sweet and rich, with the unexpected chewy yield of fresh comb.

Charlie stifled a giggle. “Mom… you’ve got honey on your nose.”

"Why flavor the honey afterwards, when it can be made ready-flavored? Now, then..." Mr. Wonka clapped and rubbed his hands. "Queen, Queen, we're looking for- ah- excuse me, ma’am?" He seemed to flag down no-one, and it took Sarah a moment to realize he was talking to a bee, the tiny insect hovering at his eye level as he leaned on his cane.

"Good morning! I was wondering if I could speak to the Queen about-"

The bee spat out a few bars of its humming buzz, like a tune from a music box.

"Oh, no, no, no, no, they're not intruders or enemies, one of them is actually my-"

Another verse of buzzing.

"I was trying to say that I-"

A short burst of buzzing.

"I'm afraid I'm having a little trouble with your accent, could you please tell the Queen we wish to have an audience? Thank you."

Mr. Wonka turned back to Charlie, chuckling a bit. "Got a little on your nose there, Charlie."

As Charlie rubbed at his sticky nose, the worker bee zipped off and vanished into the boughs of the nearest honeycomb tree. Somewhat dazed, Sarah watched it go, and as if her focus was adjusting to the tiny scale, the more she looked, the more bees she saw. She had never been afraid of bees. She wasn’t entirely easy with words like ‘intruders’ and ‘enemies’ being bandied about, but it was hard to hold onto any sense of danger with the warm, sleepy drone around them, the sunlight filtering through the trees.

She honestly could not imagine what she would have said, if someone just two days ago had told her that by Saturday morning, she would be standing in a beautiful indoor orchard made of honeycomb watching a man talk to insects- and watching them talk back. She- maybe- almost- felt she understood now, why Joe hadn’t grabbed Charlie and run the moment the first kid had disappeared up the tubes. So much weirdness, layers of question upon question and fact upon nonsensical fact... it was too much, even if you could pick just one single crazy thing to object to.

The great low hum of the bees around them lifted slightly in tone, thrumming pleasantly like an expectant fanfare. Sarah picked out a single bee, almost twice the size of the others, dipping out of the foliage above their heads with a small cloud of workers just behind.

Charlie pulled at her sleeve.

“Look, Mom- that must be the Queen!”

"Your Majesty." Mr. Wonka bowed deeply, before gently nudging Charlie, who did his best to copy his mentor’s gesture. Sarah mustered a clumsy curtsey. As the queen got close, she could see the insect was wearing an actual gold crown on her brow, and what looked like a tiny purple bee-sized robe, fluttering in the buzz of her wings.

Mr. Wonka eventually straightened back up, setting his top hat back on his head, and Charlie followed.

"Wonderful to see you, your Majesty, it has been too long."

The Queen spoke. Like a song, except her words came from the members of her swarm, amplifying her voice.

"Ah, news travels fast, I see," said Mr. Wonka, talking as casually as if he was just having a chat with a friend while waiting in a supermarket checkout line.

"Yes, well, I wouldn't say it went without a hitch, but it did indeed work. Oh, _daahhhling,_ the stories I could tell _you-_ " He swayed a little, a dumb grin on his face, before clearing his throat and getting back to the task at hand. "Speaking of which..."

Carefully, he brought Charlie to his side, hand ever-present with a gentle touch on his shoulder. He could never forget what he had felt the day before. It had been such a thrill to finally bring the outside world, represented by the five children and their parents, into his factory. To see what they made of it… and to see what it made of them.

Somehow, each child had found their way to a temptation they couldn’t resist. Augustus, Violet, Veruca, Mike- as the day had pulled them all along with it he’d glimpsed _why_ things might go wrong in each case but never _how,_ never until the very last moment. Introducing each wonder had brought an anxious knot to his stomach, every time. He’d felt excitement and pride in his creations, yes, but also a nervous anticipation, a tiny but terrifying loss of control.

But, with Charlie, he never felt that. If he’d had a doubt left by the end of the day, the Imagining Room had settled it for good. Up in that quiet, moonlit eyrie at the very top of his factory, he’d been given a glimpse right into the heart of a truly kind, hopeful, forthright spirit whom he could trust with anything... even the thing he held most dear.

Charlie, he felt, would always make the right choice.

"Allow me to introduce young Charlie Bucket, my new apprentice."

The Queen looked at Charlie, buzzing in a tune that sounded like a greeting.

"Go on," encouraged Mr. Wonka.

Charlie took a nervous step forwards, glancing back to his mom, then Mr. Wonka, who arched an eyebrow in response. A moment, and then he took a big breath and put a hand on his own skinny chest, and suddenly Sarah knew exactly what he was about to do.

She knew because she’d seen it before, more times than she could had counted. Flickering firelight- when there was any- and her father-in-law’s croaky old voice from the rickety high-sleeper above.

_Charlie, did I ever tell you about the time I met the Queen of Thailand? I remember it was a beautiful summer’s evening, and ol’ Ike Eisenhower said to me, he said, Joe, there’s a lot riding on this little shindig, just watch me and do exactly what I do. Y’see, there’s a right and a wrong way to greet royalty, what you gotta do is bow real low- just like that, Charlie, that’s right! -and say..._

“How’d you do, your Majesty?” said Charlie. “It’s an honor to meet you.” And then- straightening up a little from his deep bow just as he started to wobble- “Your apple honey is absolutely _wonderful!”_

The room seemed to brighten a fraction, and the Queen’s consorts let out a pleased buzzing noise. She bobbed in what seemed to be the bee equivalent of a curtsy, and Mr. Wonka beamed, standing between her and Charlie.

The bees hummed a new verse, light and bouncy.

"She says she thanks you. Her drones have put a lot of work into it, and they're very proud."

"Oh and-" Charlie reached back, bringing his mother forward. "This is my Mom."

"Pleasure to meet you, your Majesty..." Sarah did her clumsy curtsey again, and the bees hummed, sending a spike of unease through her. Mr. Wonka just grinned.

"She says she loves your blouse."

“Oh- thank you, ma’am...” Without quite knowing what she was doing, she twitched the pleats of her patched skirt into neater order. The Queen hovered gently before her, and Sarah wasn’t sure if she was going a bit loopy, but now that she was so close, she could have sworn that she could detect an answering spark of _knowing_ in the tiny insect’s dark compound eyes.

_Sarah, you just took a compliment from a bee. Loopy doesn’t cover it._

“It’s probably the flowers,” whispered Charlie, tapping the floral patches on her sleeve.

The background drone sang another chorus, buzzing into the shape of what looked like two cups, which clinked together.

"Ah! She’s inviting you for tea later, Mrs. Bucket. She would like to- hey!" Mr. Wonka frowned and set his hands on his hips. "What do you mean, I'm no good at womanly conversation?"

A flitting drone, like a laugh descending a scale followed by a small ditty.

"Well, I never-"

A coda, then a final note.

"I suppose you're right." Mr. Wonka relented, as the Queen Bee looked expectantly to Sarah.

“I- I would love to, your Majesty,” she managed to say. The Queen swung her fuzzy little shape in a pleased little back-and-forth weave, the sun glinting off her tiny crown. The sound of the swarm fell back to a normal background hum as she and her retinue- not to put it impolitely- buzzed off.

Charlie watched the royal procession disappear between the waxen trees, scrubbing his cuff surreptitiously across his sticky nose. “How did you learn to talk to bees, Mr. Wonka?”

“Anyone can talk to bees, Charlie,” said Mr. Wonka. “The tricky part is persuading them to talk back. But that’s a lesson for another day. Oh, so much to learn and do!" He twirled his cane.

"I suppose we should learn _something_ we were supposed to learn today. Hm..." He walked a little circle around them.

"A-actually, Mr. Wonka," Charlie spoke up, reaching into his pocket for the small notebook he'd been given the day before, completely blank and full of possibility. "I was uh, kinda wondering if we would be able to go back to the Mixing Room where you make your inventions and maybe... try making some of the ones I thought up yesterday?"

"That’s a _brilliant_ idea, Charlie!" Mr. Wonka was suddenly pacing like he'd got a shot of sugar straight to his limbs, walking in errant lines as ideas and notions zigzagged through his head. "Wonderful, astounding! I cannot wait! Let’s go!" He motioned for them to follow, holding onto his hat as he made a beeline for the door like an excited little boy.

* * *

This time, the Elevator dropped them off in a winding, greenish tunnel that sloped gently upwards with no apparent end in sight. There were doors upon doors set into the walls, with a whole assortment of weird and wild sounds to be heard faintly behind each, but Mr. Wonka took off like a marathon-runner the second the Elevator stopped moving, his cane pointed dead ahead as if it was dragging him after it.

“Hurry up, Buckets! Let time slip, and it withers on the stalk!”

Charlie beamed up at Sarah and caught her hand. Sarah just had time to hitch up her skirt, and together the two of them dashed forwards, chasing the echoes of Mr. Wonka’s voice up ahead.

The tunnel sloped up around a bend, twisting in a complete circle that, spatially speaking, should have taken them right back to where they started. Instead, it brought them to a sudden stop at a large door, at which Mr. Wonka was currently attending to several golden door-chains all in a row.

Sarah couldn't help but notice they were all facing the wrong direction, by the very fact that Mr. Wonka was able to undo them from this side of the door. Either this was just more of his boundless, impossible whimsy... or maybe it was to keep something in.

He played another musical code on what was unmistakably a hot-pink toy piano, followed by a fingerprint, eye, and top hat scan, before the door finally opened and Mr. Wonka pulled it agape with his cane. He was unable to hold a laugh as he bounded in, Charlie right on his heels.

To Charlie, the room was just as wondrous today as it had been yesterday. Tangles of colorful neon tubes curled and twisted overhead, tables stood heaped with experiments, and the smell of fruit- particularly blueberry- hung in the air.

Mr. Wonka was already at a curious-looking device, like a large bookshelf with deep openings, finishing pulling a spattered lab coat on over his tailored jacket before pulling on some rubber gloves. He pressed a button on the side, and the shelves started to move and scroll, rows and rows of ingredients of all colors moving by.

"Oh, so much to try, but first..." Mr. Wonka mused, aloud.

Following close behind Charlie, Sarah glanced back at the door, where the large back-to-front letters on the glass spelled out MIXING ROOM.

“Charlie,” she said, as quietly as she could, as she caught up to her son, “Is this where-”

“You know,” said Mr. Wonka, without turning or even pausing in his perusal of the rotating shelves, “a wise man once said, one whisper added to a thousand others becomes a roar of malcontent.”

Sarah felt her cheeks get hot. She didn’t know how he could possibly have heard her, what with the gurgle and thump of the pipes above them and the perpetual background thunder of the factory. He must have ears like a bat. “Yes, Mrs. Bucket,” he continued, “This is where we had our little fructose expansion misadventure yesterday. Which never would have happened if Violet had followed my _rules-_ isn’t that right, Charlie?”

"He did warn her, Mom," Charlie admitted, as Mr. Wonka stopped the vertical carousel.

"So I did! I warned all of them!" Mr. Wonka plucked a vial from the array of colored tubes, squinting at it for a moment before pulling a disgusted face and grabbing one that was more yellow in hue. "But did any of them listen to me? Of course they didn't! I show them wonders untold, things I've worked on for decades, and all they can think of is themselves! All reason, out the window!" Mr. Wonka grabbed a pair of goggles from atop the mixing apparatus at the center of the room, not bothering to offer the other two pairs sitting next to it atop the broiler as he slipped them on with one hand.

He cranked a wheel, watching as the tubes above changed color.

"I _despise_ gum. It's soft and gross and it gets everywhere. But I gave it the old college try, and BOOM!" He flailed a little in exclamation, threatening to spill whatever was in the tube. "I get half my equipment covered in blueberry juice! CONTACT!" He leaned back to yell, before opening the small hatch and tossing the liquid inside, bracing his body against the small door to close it immediately afterwards.

There was a flash and a pulse of white in the tubes, bleating like the deep note of a tuba. Sarah, who had picked up a pair of the goggles herself with a vague presentiment of danger, just about had time to fumble them against Charlie’s face before the bright flash of light stamped their shadows deep black against the opposite wall. All she could do for herself was close her eyes, but she still saw the pulse right through her eyelids.

Mr. Wonka waited a moment, before opening the hatch and looking in.

“Mom?” said Charlie, pulling down his goggles as the machine vented a burst of saffron-tinted steam from the array of pipes above the mixing-station and fell quiet. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Charlie,” said Sarah, who could barely see a thing. If looks could kill... well, Mr. Wonka would have been perfectly safe, because she couldn't even make out where he was through the dazzling array of spots in her vision. “You just keep those on tight, and don’t take them off until we leave, alright?”

"There we are!" Mr. Wonka lifted his goggles and dusted his hands as he looked up at the tubes. "Had to give it a detox, it's been mixing Liquid Sunshine all night." He crossed behind the machine and came out the other side holding one of the glowing lollipops.

"It really is a wonderful idea- all that's left now is to improve the stability, so they stop leaking sunshine after a few hours," said Mr. Wonka, as if it were no more trouble then a misplaced set of keys. He held it up to the light, inspecting the bottom with one eye closed before offering it to Charlie.

Charlie took the shining, lightbulb-shaped lollipop. The golden glow caught the flat black lenses of his goggles, turning them into two little suns as he held the invention up, wonderingly.

"But... yesterday, you said it'd never work. You said it was..." He passed it to his mother, who really could have done without having a tiny supernova pressed into her hands at that moment, and reacted with a wince as she held it away from her already-dazzled eyes.

With his hands free, Charlie flipped through the pages he'd already scribbled in his new notebook.

_"Too practical- there's blue-sky thinking and then there's-"_

"-Just plain loopy."

Mr. Wonka visibly hesitated after he finished his own quotation, eyes wide as he stared at nothing, a space that seemed to hover just above Charlie’s shoes.

_Dear God, the kid was keeping track already?!_

"Yes, well, see, the thing is-" Mr. Wonka seemed to abandon his stride forward mid-step, a long leg staying airborne as he turned on his toe, before continuing his walk in a different direction.

"The thing about that is-"

Another errant turn, and this time Sarah was almost convinced he was about to sweep everything off the nearest workbench with his leg before he continued his pace. Finally, he gave up and leaned on the Mixer, pretending to check his nails, even though he had rubber gloves on.

"We decided to give the product another trial."

Charlie’s grin was almost as bright as the Mixer’s explosive pulse had been.

“What’s... in this?” At his side, Sarah blinked the last of the glare out of her eyes and held up the glowing bulb. The golden light was rich and vivid but not glaring, nearly the color of her yellow rose. “What’s it made from?”

“Bananas and uranium,” said Charlie, promptly. Sarah jerked back, horrified. She would have dropped the thing like a hot potato, but she instinctively didn’t want to find out what might happen if it hit the ground too hard.

 _“Uranium??_ But- but- isn’t that radioactive?”

“It’s fine,” said Mr. Wonka, plucking it out of her hand. “I did crunch the numbers, you see... uranium has a half-life of seven hundred and four million years, but bananas have a shelf-life of about two minutes after you put them in your fruit bowl, so if you mix ‘em together it’s perfectly safe.”

He set the lollipop on the top of the mixer, a little more precariously than Sarah would have liked. "So!" He clapped his hands, squatting a little next to Charlie. "What are we making first?"

Charlie looked like he was getting five birthday Wonka bars at once as he opened his little notebook. Mr. Wonka hovered over his shoulder with a childish grin.

"Well..." Charlie glanced up briefly, catching Sarah's eye before he pointed at the page. "I had this little idea for ice cream that would never melt-"

Mr. Wonka was immediately off like a shot, letting out an excited little sound as he crossed the room and slammed his fist on the carousel button.

"Brilliant! I have some basics we can grab to get started with!"

Charlie bolted eagerly after him, but Sarah managed to catch his elbow as he passed. The more detail she took in around her, the more her worry worked its sickish fingers into her stomach. She’d never seen a more out-of-kilter, unpredictable working environment. The laundry had never been a pleasant or relaxing place to work, and it had more than its fair share of hazards, but it also had stringent rules- for every steamer, industrial iron, open dryer or solvent station there was a safety procedure and a heavy price to pay if you were caught being lax. The rules were there for a reason.

In comparison to Mrs. Walinsky’s domain, this place looked like anarchy. The muddle of pipes overhead throbbed a rainbow of colors, weaving through each other with no apparent supports, the workbenches were cluttered and chaotic, and if any of these strangely-shaped devices had anything to do with safety she couldn’t imagine which, or how. And the Mixer sat like an alien spider at the centre, chugging away quietly as if it was sniggering to itself.

“Charlie, be careful-”

He looked back at her, his eyes full of eager excitement that dwindled a little as he saw her expression. Only by a fraction, as he noticed how worried she looked, but, God, in that moment she hated herself for it.

"I will, Mom. Don't worry."

She made herself smile and let him go, but followed right on his heels. Unforgivable killjoy she might feel, but she was no Mr. Beauregarde. If Mr. Wonka had any more dangerous surprises up his sleeves, Sarah was not about to just stand back and watch.

Mr. Wonka was intently watching the shelves of the carousel as they whirred by, letting go of the button when a covered shelf came into view. "Put on those gloves, Charlie," he said, nodding to a spare pair. He slid the glass door open and mist tumbled out, so cold it immediately turned Charlie’s nose and cheeks pink. The mist kept coming with no stop as Mr. Wonka reached a hand, then his whole arm, into the freezer.

The gloves were too big for Charlie, but they did the job, especially when Mr. Wonka set a glass milk bottle in his hands, so cold Charlie could feel it through the gloves.

"Yak’s milk from Everest," Mr. Wonka explained as he reached in his whole arm in again. "If you roll the yaks down a hill they make an impressive snowball that you can then milk for naturally-stirred cream- now, where is that dry ice?" He screwed up his face in concentration, as his entire shoulder reached into the freezer.

Charlie rubbed a little of the frosty rime from the bottle with his gloved thumb as he waited, making a _squeek-squeek_ noise. Yesterday, the Mixing Room had seemed a lot smaller, with nine people crowding around the central Mixer and a whole throng of voices to his left and right, Mike squabbling with Veruca behind him and Violet heckling Mr. Wonka in the spotlight. He definitely liked it better like this, today- echoey and mysterious, with space to breathe and hear the ebb and flow of the tubes, the way the mechanical sounds around them responded to every adjustment of the Mixer.

He would have liked it even more if not for the faint tension he could feel, the sense of something frayed and a little fractious in the air. His mom had taken a pair of gloves, and finally picked up the other pair of goggles, but instead of putting them on she was twisting the elastic strap around and around her fingers as if it was a string of worry beads.

"Ah! Here it is!" Mr. Wonka pulled out a hunk of dry ice. He seemed to hold it out to no one in particular- perhaps to his perpetual invisible audience- before looking back into the freezer.

"Ah! And-"

He looked to his other hand, seeing it was still occupied.

"Mrs Bucket," he said, moments before the chunk of ice was set in her gloved hands. "You two pour those into the mixer through the little circular panel there." He twirled his finger vaguely in the direction of the Mixer. "Charlie, once you're done, I'll show you how to work the carousel and choose some ingredients, while I get the Mixer prepped." He shut the freezer door and went to a wall of knobs, moving in a flurry of activity.

Sarah followed, still holding the smoking hunk of ice in both hands. The chill bit into her fingers through the tough leather, white vapor drifting floorwards in a ghostly trail behind her. “Mr. Wonka, why was this just- sitting in there loose? Isn’t it meant to be held in some kind of container?”

“Well, when you put it into the Mixer, it will be held in a container, won’t it? Let’s not be forward in coming backwards, now, time to get this recipe moving.”

“But-”

Meanwhile, now on his own by the Mixer, Charlie studied the small round hatch. There was no knob or handle, but a couple of buttons underneath were colored red and green, and an uncertain prod of the green one popped the hatch open with a pressurized _hiss._

So far, so good.

"But, Mr. Wonka,” said Sarah, “why-”

"Why, why, why," Mr. Wonka interrupted. "Been hearing an awful lot of that word, and I can't say I care for it." He finished whatever it was he'd been doing, before moving on to begin another flurry of activity at the back of the mixer, which was now starting to hum.

“Mom?” Charlie had finished pouring the chilled cream into the machine. Sarah let him tow her back to the Mixer, her mouth thinning to a sharp line as she fed the chunk of dry ice into the hatch and whapped it shut with a little more force than she meant to, jarring her frosty fingers.

At least putting it in the machine got the darn stuff out of harm’s way.

"Now then, Charlie-" Mr. Wonka’s body language betrayed his bright words, as he gave a small fidget and a fleeting glance at Sarah. "What else is in your never-melt ice-cream recipe?"

"Well..." Charlie flipped his notebook open. "I was thinking maybe if we add some things that are hot, then add more cold things, maybe they get used to the heat?"

"Wonderful!" He whisked Charlie away from Sarah’s side, pointing out to the boy how to work the carousel. His instructions came very fast, and there were a lot of them. The moment Charlie seemed to have grasped the basics of turning the shelves down his own, Mr. Wonka abandoned him to talk to an Oompa-Loompa who had just entered, clipboard in hand, to ask him something about supplies.

Feeling a little flurried and hurried, though hugely excited, Charlie turned the racks of shelves. Glowing colors, test-tubes in glass racks, cases and cylinders full of nuts, spices, seeds, essences. They were all carefully-labelled, each bank coded and numbered- the only snag was, the weird letters and symbols weren’t in any language he’d ever seen before. Whether it was backwards, or mirrored, or another alphabet entirely, or just some made-up cypher… it didn’t matter much to Charlie, who could only search for ingredients he recognized by sight, and hope they really were what they looked like, or close enough.

_Let’s just try… vanilla… and..._

With the first sample in his hands, he landed on a small glass jar. He knew what the brittle, delicate star-shaped flowers inside the latter were- or at least, he hoped he did- and he smiled, picking it out of the rack.

“And jasmine,” he said, under his breath. “That’s Mom’s favorite.”

"Picked? Good!" Mr. Wonka said, as the Loompa he'd been speaking with hurried off. "Pop ‘em in, Charlie, stir that wheel there, and let’s see what comes out!"

He pulled his goggles down over his eyes, and pre-emptively held on to his hat.

The Mixer’s wheel was a heavy steel affair, with long angled spokes like that of a ship’s helm. Charlie had heard of turning wheels, spinning wheels, and even driving wheels, but he wasn’t quite sure how you were supposed to _stir_ a wheel. Generally, wheels only turned one way- two at best- but there was something extra-complicated about the way this one was mounted onto the machine. It looked as if it had joints in it.

Charlie glanced up, stealing a look sideways at his mom, who was watching with her hands fretting at the hem of her cardigan. It reminded him strongly of times when they had searched the dump together for this or that, and she had caved to his pleas and promises to be careful and let him go climbing off up some mountain of junk or rickety carcass of a car to reach some precarious treasure that caught his eye. He would never look back at those times without seeing her watching his every move from the ground, her nervous hands never still, or folded and rammed into her armpits to stop herself fidgeting.

He would very much have liked to have asked Mr. Wonka for a little more direction, but to do so felt… prickly. As if the situation, the loaded silence from his mom and his hero’s galloping confidence in him, was an overfilled balloon, and if he poked it the wrong way with the wrong sort of question the whole thing could just- _pop._

And so he kept quiet, and after the little hatch had sucked down the contents of his two jars, he touched the wheel experimentally, then opted for turning it, clockwise, spinning it with as much energy as his small frame could muster.

The mixer took the energy eagerly, letting out a hiss of steam before it began to chug rhythmically, shaking like a washing machine. The tubes above lit with a cool, icy blue that filled the room.

"Keep at it, Charlie!" Mr. Wonka’s voice was behind him, but Charlie didn't dare look back. His mentor’s face would have been unreadable either way, as the lenses of both their goggles flared blue.

The tone was rising, a humming and a chugging and a shaking so hard the mixer almost looked like it would tear itself apart. Charlie felt his arms falter, his hands start to ache from the cranking, his skinny arms and muscles crying out at the sudden demand.

"Charlie, keep it going!"

"I can't!"

"Charlie-!"

The Mixer let out a whistle, loud and like an oncoming steam engine as the light in the tubes became so bright they could feel its heat through their goggles. The tubes suddenly changed color, orange and red-hot, and Charlie finally had to let go as the wheel hissed against his hand.

"Mr. Wonka!"

"HIT THE DECK, EVERYONE!"

Charlie felt arms around his waist, and Mr. Wonka pulled the boy against him, turning as the Mixer gave out a tremendous BANG, exploding with tidal wave of white foam.

The fluffy white tsunami slapped against the walls of the Mixing Room. Shreds of it rained silently down, drifting and slipping through the labyrinth of pipes like sea-spume in the wake of the explosion. Up on the catwalk, a small group of Oompa-Loompas watched, serious and silent, like the spectators of a Grand Prix that had just ended in catastrophe. One solitary Loompa took out a ukulele, only for her nearest companion to take it from her quietly, shaking his head.

Sarah stumbled her way through the knee-deep foam to her son, coughing into her sleeve to get the stuff out of her mouth so she could speak. She reached the two of them just as Charlie made it to his feet, and grabbed him, kneeling on the streaming floor to make sure he was in one piece.

“Charlie! Are you alright?!”

Charlie looked more like a small dazed snowman than a boy, and as she swiped his face clean he looked more than upset- panicked and almost tearful. He turned, foam sliding from his shoulders.

“Mr. Wonka, I’m sorry! I couldn’t- it just-”

Mr. Wonka’s back was completely white as he reached down, fishing his hat out of the foam. It looked more like a mound of bubbles as he set it back on his head. The Mixer had floam clogging every opening, making it look like a fire extinguisher had exploded inside it.

_Poor Augustus? What about my machines?!_

Charlie felt himself begin to tear up in the horrid silence.

"My mixer… my equipment... exploded..." Mr. Wonka’s voice was soft as he turned, taking off his goggles. Charlie could see his eyes as he wiped his mouth, taking in the befoamed Mixing Room.

"That was... _SpecTAC-ULAR!"_ A smile split the mask of bubbles. _"Whoofh!_ I haven't seen an explosion like that since the great taffy implosion of '02!"

He licked at his own lips, smacking them a little as he tasted the foam. "Vanilla and jasmine, interesting combo! Brilliant! Well done!" he laughed, and started to clap.

For Charlie, it was as if a weight he didn’t even know he had been carrying fell from his shoulders along with the rest of the foam. Yesterday had been an incredible whirlwind that had dropped him, stunned and elated, in a completely different world, but up until that moment he had barely realised that a small part of him had been scared. Scared that it was too good to be true, scared that he would mess up just like the other four had before him, that the fantastic connection he’d felt with his hero on their starry first flight had been… just a fluke, somehow, something he couldn’t live up to.

Now, he _knew_ he had no reason to be afraid. He felt himself grinning from ear to ear, raising an elbow to ward off a short squall of flying foam as Mr. Wonka shook himself like a sheepdog.

“Failing is learning, dear boy. If I’d been afraid of what might happen the first time I decided to mix something up, I’d never have invented as much as a marshmallow. No-one ever learned anything from getting it right on the first try- well, except bomb disposal experts, I guess," Mr. Wonka added.

He waded through the foam, his shoes sloshing in whatever was underneath, looking for something. Pausing, he clapped his hands twice.

A small purple glow came from under the foam, just a stride away from him.

"There you are!" He dipped down and fished out his cane before heading to the wall, picking up a familiar speaker-phone.

"Loompas, we've had a level 23-19 foam incursion in the mixing room- please dispatch the vacuum service. Thaaaank you!" He hung up promptly.

"Well, that certainly could have gone worse!" he finished, turning back to his companions.

The sight awaiting him was certainly an exercise in contrasts. There was Charlie, beaming under a light blizzard of the foam he hadn’t yet managed to shake off, checking through his notebook to make sure it hadn’t gotten damp and scribbling as he went. Then there was Sarah, who was almost precisely half-foamed- the left side, divided neatly down the middle. She was looking right back at him, an arm around Charlie’s shoulder, the other tightly tucked into her side, and her expression was bothersomely hard for him to read.

Mr. Wonka froze, shoulders shooting up to his ears for a moment.

Admittedly, he’d never seen much of his own parents, but any child who'd ever had a mother knew that look. It was one of those looks that grownups always seemed to be able to read the subtext in, those underlying shades of _you messed up and we both know how, but we grownups are too stubborn to say it outright._

Even when one party didn't know exactly what the other was referring to, or if the look was even justified in the giver’s assumption. That was just how grownups were. He'd gotten the very same look in this very same room the day before, after a very particular explosion.

"Mmm." Mr. Wonka seemed to physically shake his unease off his shoulders, as if an unwelcome chill had gone up his spine. Bits of foam flew everywhere. "Oh well, _c'est la vie,_ I'm sure we'll get it on the next one! C'mon-" He was already off to look for new ingredients.

“Did you like it, Mom?” asked Charlie. The two of them had waded to a clear spot, and Sarah was busy brushing foam from his hair and the back of his jumper. He leaned against her for balance, wobbling as he shook bubbles out of his shoes. “The taste,” he added, quickly, “not the exploding.”

“It was terrific,” Sarah assured him, as she flicked a last bit of foam from behind his ear. “Jasmine’s my favorite. Your Grandma Georgina used to make a wonderful tea with jasmine...”

Charlie grinned, then blinked as his gaze wandered from her face to her hand. Sarah followed his eyes, and saw that the blob of foam had stuck itself to her finger. As she looked, it gave a funny little tremor all on its own, sending shivers up the back of her hand.

“Come on, Charlie.” She swiped it off with her other palm, slinging it back into the pool of foam with a _splat_ , and set off after Mr. Wonka, keeping Charlie close.

Mr. Wonka was currently wrestling with the button, muttering small ‘Come _on’_ s as the carousel jumped and twitched, refusing to turn. "Well, _fudge,"_ he huffed, leaning on his cane. "I guess we won't be able to give it a second shot if the carousel can't move."

Sarah gave the exploded, still-foaming Mixer behind them a silent, sceptical look.

"Suppose we'll just have to wait until it’s all cleaned up. Well, then-" Mr. Wonka turned, sending water sloshing under the foam as he did so. "A little ride in the Elevator with the skylight open, and we'll all be properly dried off."

"Mr. Wonka-" started Sarah. She couldn’t quite shake the feeling of the little blob of foam on her hand, its weird, knowing quiver.

"No wicked for the rest, my dear lady! _Allons-y!"_ He half-strode, half-waded to the door and pulled it open, a rush of foam spilling out past him. He waited until Charlie and Sarah passed through into the greenish hallway beyond before closing the door, redoing the locks and chains.

"Now, then, off to-" Stopping mid-step, he looked down. He checked his trouser pockets, checked his coat pockets, patted his vest and bow-tie.

"What’s the matter, Mr. Wonka?"

"I have a nagging feeling I'm forgetting something, Charlie... but I'm sure it’s nothing. Onwards!”


	3. Cornfields & Cameras

Riding in the Elevator with the top popped was like standing in a subway train with the carriage windows wide open. The chaotic wind rushed through the car and whipped around the three passengers, stirring their clothes and hair in a wild cyclone, but while subway air was close and stale and smelled at best like fumes and ancient grease, the wind surging through the Elevator was a warm, delicious-smelling breeze, with a different tempting scent for every twist and turn it made.

Charlie stood with his hands spread against the glass, taking in everything he could possibly see. The Elevator hurtled on through dim, blue-glowing passages where the walls were spiralled here and there with glittering white crystals, broke across a vast canyon where the hard dark earth was studded with huge chunks of puffy pink and white, and dipped into a deep, dark tunnel.

The light, what little there was now, began to turn faint, firey orange. Shadowy _things,_ things with tendrils like long, inky fingers, brushed the Elevator’s sides as it slowed, creeping at last to a halt.

“Where are we?” asked Charlie, in a hushed whisper, as the doors slid open.

"Well Charlie-" Mr. Wonka shook out his coat and smoothed down his lapels, before striding out of the Elevator into the shadowy hall beyond. "It’s important for a chocolatier to know what it _is_ he makes his chocolate for."

"Because it tastes good? To make people happy?" Charlie whispered, staying close to his mother, as any little boy would in a place such as this. Mr. Wonka grinned broadly, making Charlie realize that his entire being was now tinted a burnt orange. Even the normally purple hue of the end of his cane glowed orange as he lit it up.

"Hit the nail on the head, Charlie. But there are other times when sweets are important, particular days. See where I'm going with this?"

Charlie hummed, putting his finger to his lips. "Oh! Holidays!"

"Precisely!" Mr. Wonka fidgeted with new energy. "Valentine’s Day! Easter! Christmas! Talk Like A Pirate Day! Oh, I love ALL of them!"

Up ahead, the hall widened and led up some strangely rickety, elderly-looking wooden steps, to a looming arched doorway that looked more like it belonged to some lowering, gothic mansion than in a factory.

Mr. Wonka set his foot lightly at the bottom of the stairs. He looked back and caught the other two’s eyes as he leaned, settling his weight deliberately on the step, and his grin widened like a mad cat’s as the wood let out a long, drawn-out, ominous _creeeaaaaaaaaak._

“But this one just might be my favourite.”

He scurried up the steps, a fast-forward volley of _creek-creek-squeek-creek-creek._ In a rack to one side, a row of hurricane lanterns waited, and he grabbed one and passed it to Charlie as the boy creaked and squeaked up to join him. Its light was orange too, a ruddy, flickery toffee-apple hue that threw their shadows huge across the heavy doorway.

Still grinning ghoulishly, Mr. Wonka set the tip of his cane against the double-door, and gave it a push.

“Welcome… to Halloween.”

Sarah held Charlie close as Mr. Wonka pushed open the door. Another cavernous room opened up before them, the door creaking shut behind, and the smell of brisk autumn air hit their noses. It was dark in here, as if the morning outside had come and gone long ago, and in its place was endless night. Mr. Wonka stepped down, and Charlie realized they were standing on a creaky old dilapidated porch. The wood was a blueish-black under their feet, meeting a dark umber dirt path that meandered through into a dark and twisted knot of trees. The entrance into the woods was blocked by a rusting, peeling golden iron gate.

Somewhere, a howl sang out in the lonely night, and Mr. Wonka grinned in the sole light of his lantern.

 _"When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls..."_ He held his lantern up, illuminating the rusted gate before turning back to his companions. "Why, Mrs. Bucket..." He suddenly strode up to them, his lantern thrust up to Sarah’s face. "Doth mine eyes deceive me? Or does your cadaverous pallor betray an aura of foreboding?"

Sarah had had quite enough. The atmosphere was eerie to a fault, but as to foreboding… no. She wasn’t afraid. Not of this set-piece, though it was as creepy as a carnival ghost-train, and the gloomy warehouse rafters half-glimpsed in the darkness far over their heads only added to the sense of a perfect capsule world of spookiness. If the theatrical cheesiness of it all hadn’t been enough to ground her, Mr. Wonka’s expectant glee did the trick. She let out a short, exasperated laugh, pushing the swinging lantern sharply out of her face.

“Mr. Wonka, the only _frightening_ thing here is your over-acting. And Halloween’s not for another nine months.”

Mr. Wonka’s face twitched a little.

"Mom loves Halloween!" said Charlie. "She makes me a costume every year, so I can go to the school party!"

Sarah looked to her son and smoothed his hair. Charlie was right. It was the only other time in the year besides his birthday when he got chocolate, and Sarah always made sure to keep an eye out for discarded and unwanted costumes to save for the next year, so he could always meet the bare minimum the other kids could. It always broke her heart to see her boy in the same shabby old costumes every Halloween, but little Charlie would always be too excited about his chocolate to care.

"Do you, now? Then perhaps you should go first?"

Mr. Wonka gestured with his cane, and the iron gates opened with a screeching groan, the woods beckoning with a cold breeze.

There were plenty of things that Sarah was afraid of. She had faced down most of them on a daily basis for years. She would not have called herself brave, and yet, she looked Mr. Wonka dead in the eye and put out her hand to her son, who looked up at her with nerves and excitement written all over his face. He was clearly itching to explore... and a little scared to. Just then, something howled again, crying far off through the trees, and she felt his small hand jump in hers. She gave it a squeeze.

“There’s nothing to be scared of, Charlie,” she told him. “You know what your Grandpa Joe would say...”

 _“Never waver.”_ They both spoke at the same time, and with that, Sarah hitched up her skirt- just in case- and stepped ahead.

Mr. Wonka stayed firmly in place, blinking in surprise after her. Through the gates, there was a bend in the path. The trees lining it were gnarled and sharp, with branches that almost seemed to duck down and swipe at them whenever the breeze riffled through.

"Never waver," Charlie repeated to himself, as they could see an opening in the forest ahead. The room opened out before them. They were at the edge of the wood in a moonlit field, one that reminded Charlie of the countryside. It was certainly one of the most massive rooms they had seen so far, with rows and rows and rows of hay-colored stalks. The silhouette of a lonely scarecrow stood in the distance, wearing a top hat just like Mr. Wonka’s.

"It's candy-corn!" said Mr. Wonka, a little louder and more sudden then he needed to, appearing behind them.

They both nearly leapt out of their skin. Sarah whipped around as if she had half a mind to brain him with her lantern, and his expression certainly didn’t help her feel less like it- his smirk was the epitome of _gotcha,_ fiendishly uplit by the amber glow of his cane.

Charlie let go of her hand and approached the field, descending the short bank past jack-o'-lanterns piled like wayposts on either side. The plants were tall, seven feet or more, loaded with furled ears of corn. A couple of Oompa-Loompas were at work at the edge of the field, carefully and methodically checking the ripening crop. Just beside them, there was a dark gap between the tight-packed plants, and as he got closer, Charlie could see that a pathway had been sheared neatly into the tall ranks of corn, leading deeper into the field.

He turned, calling eagerly back.

“It’s a maze!”

"Of course it is. What’s the use of growing corn unless you can make a maze from it?" Mr. Wonka beamed as he started to stride down the bank, his hand at Sarah’s back to give her a gentle nudge forward. "We've found that the best candy-corn grows if you keep it in the most spooky and autumnal conditions possible. I'd give you an ear to try, Charlie..." He tugged at his own with a grin. "But I'm afraid they're not ripe now. They won't be for another few months."

The Oompa-Loompas glanced up and nodded to the small group as they reached them. Their overalls were orange, with black cuffs and heavy field boots, and their bright ginger and auburn hair fitted right in with the general theme. They had been thinning the crop, snipping out ears here and there to stop the weight from breaking the long, whippy stalks as they ripened.

“May I see?” asked Sarah, and the Loompa busy bagging up the clippings grinned and handed her up an ear, still tight-furled in white outer leaves that felt a little powdery under her fingers. She peeled them back, and found a layer of shiny, pearly unripened kernels, with just the faintest pattern of emerging stripes in orange, yellow, and white.

_This isn’t how this works... except it is. Candy-corn’s just sugar syrup poured into a mold… except it isn’t._

_Not in here._

“This would be the _best_ place for a Halloween party.” Charlie was looking up at the twisty old arbor that guarded the entrance to the maze, strung with cobwebby vines and topped with a pair of leering, boggle-eyed jack-o’-lanterns. “It would be... A- _MAZE_ -ING.” He stopped, smiling shyly at his own pun.

“You could fill all the trees with spooky lights…” He framed his face with his fingers, miming a pair of owlish, frowning eyebrows. “Like _evil eyes…_ and you could show old horror movies… and people could pick their own candy-corn.”

"Hmm." Mr. Wonka rubbed his chin thoughtfully with one hand while leaning on his cane with the other. "Not a half-bad idea, but-" A pause. "No. No, I'm sorry, we couldn't."

"Why not?" asked Sarah.

He turned, quickly. "Because that would mean people, people that aren't you or me, coming into _my-_ into _our_ factory! And where there's people there's spies, and thieves, and dental lobbyists! People who just want to use all the wonders I create without even appreciating them! Imagine fifty different Augustuses drinking from the cider flows! Or a bunch of middle-school-age Verucas picking the whole crop before anyone else can get to them? No. I've decided, out of the question. N-O. _Nyet."_ Mr. Wonka closed his eyes and nodded firmly. When he opened them again, he saw Charlie’s face and his expression fell.

"I'm sorry-"

"No, Charlie, I- _nngh."_ He grunted at himself. "It’s a brilliant idea, it really is! It’s just… just…" He looked to the Oompa-Loompas for help, but they just shrugged.

“It’s okay, Mr. Wonka, I understand.” Charlie took the half-ripened cob from his mom’s hand, running his fingers thoughtfully along the polished little bumps of kernels.

“I suppose… it just seems like a shame,” he said, after a moment or two. “You make all these incredible things, and then you just send them out into the world. You don’t ever get to really see how much people enjoy them.”

He paused, wondering.

“I know _I_ would want to.”

"Charlie, we both saw how it went at the shop, everyone buying up the whole stock like ravenous little hyenas. Good business, yes, but I had a man buy a whole box of Whipple-Marshmallow Delights before he admitted to me he hated marshmallow and he was just getting them for the tickets!"

"So, you're just going to- to classify everyone like that?" retorted Sarah.

"From what I've seen, a good majority _are_ like that! _Ugh..."_ Mr. Wonka leaned back a little, hand over eyes as if he loathed having to talk about this.

“People aren’t that simple,” countered Sarah. Despite her annoyance at the way he dismissed Charlie’s idea, his pettiness, she found herself earnestly pressing the point. Not that she was convinced he was even hearing her. His face had assumed the same expression she’d noted the night before- the hollow, inward look he barely seemed aware of, for all his self-control and showmanship. “Even Charlie could tell you, it’s… Charlie? Charlie!”

She shook her son’s shoulder, gently, a little alarmed. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Charlie had gone very still, the candy-corn cob still clasped in both hands. His brain was whirring a mile a minute, and no wonder- it was very busy replaying the past month of his life in clear detail on the projector screen of his mind.

He’d known, on some level, ever since they’d come properly face to face in the dizzy frantic atmosphere of the Reception Room the day before, that Mr. Wonka and the quirky, irascible shopkeeper across the road were one and the same person. The voice had almost been enough on its own. Then, as the famous chocolatier had leaned down to his level, he’d recognized those sharp, faintly world-weary blue eyes even without the familiar framing of the shopkeeper’s thick horn-rimmed glasses, and his stomach had flipped like a pancake. But there had been too much to follow, too much to see and wonder at and keep up with, and there had never been a single second to stop and think about it properly.

Until now.

 _Oh.  
_ _Oh, holy cow.  
_ _I explained Willy Wonka… to Willy Wonka._

"You-"

Mr. Wonka uncovered his eyes as Charlie took a step closer, almost too staggered to point up at him. "It WAS you! You were the shopkeeper across the street!"

Mr. Wonka seemed to welcome the slight change of topic.

"You and your flights of fancy, Bucket… I have no idea what you're talking about," he said, looking off towards the improbable moon. Of course, the fact that he was now smiling threw off the act.

"You can't fool me, Mr. Wonka, that was you! It was you the whole time!"

"Well...." Mr. Wonka glanced to Sarah, grinned, then gave a small bow. "You really are a clever boy, Charlie. How lucky, that one of the first people I met out in the world turned out to be the perfect candidate!” He ruffled his hair.

"Funny how things work out, hm?"

"But- you-" Charlie’s eyes widened, and he let out a yelp. "The dollar!"

"Easy, Charlie. These stalks have sensitive ears- you really must keep your voice down," said Mr. Wonka, starting to stride back the way they came.

He couldn’t have put his finger on it- as yet he was barely aware of it- but the fact was that Charlie seemed to do something nobody and nothing else could... distract him. Divert his train of thought, switch it to a better, brighter track. It was a tiny miracle, but it still had a limit, especially when the conversation hit such a sensitive nerve.

With his back to both of them, the amused smile fell from his face by degrees.

 _“People aren’t that simple,”_ he muttered, rattling his cane peevishly along the palings of the porch steps as he climbed them. “Really. Aren’t they. Aren’t...”

He slowed, halting with one foot on the top step.

_“I can’t understand how these leaks keep happening! I vet every new worker myself, I thought I could tell when people were honest, but… now every time I look over someone’s file, I’m just thinking what if I’m wrong, what if they’re another spy? I can’t- we can’t take much more of this, Sam, we’re going to go under!”_

_“I’m telling you, you can’t count on these people’s goodwill, Will. Workers, customers- people are always going to be jealous when they see someone doing better than they are. It drives them crazy, it’s just human nature. They’re always going to want to take what you have.”_

_“I… suppose...”_

_“A man’s gotta know who his friends are. Listen, I tell you what, let me handle the hiring for a while. It’ll be a cold day in hell before one of these lousy little ingrates slips past ol’ Sam Slugworth. What d’you say?”_

Reaching the foot of the porch, Sarah and Charlie paused, exchanging a puzzled look. Mr. Wonka had stopped very still at the top of the steps, his back to them, head cocked to one side as if he was listening. Sarah was just about to speak, when the ancient butterstamp speaker-phone hooked up in the alcove of the porch shattered the silence with a piercing ring.

Mr. Wonka jumped out of his skin, his startled shriek hitting about the same pitch. Charlie giggled, covering his mouth a little.

"Now there's a Halloween scare," Sarah chuckled, as Mr. Wonka picked up the receiver, leaning against the box.

"Ahoy-hoy, Mr. Wonka here..."

He was grinning again, as the easy showman’s mask returned once more. Someone spoke on the line, and the smile fell a fraction.

"Are you sure?"

More noise from the other side.

"Interesting! Potentially problematic, but interesting! Do go on-" He held up a finger to speak further, but the voice on the other end grew in volume.

"Alright, alright, I'll come up there, watch your blood pressure."

Mr. Wonka hung up, and started straightening his cuffs. "Thank goodness we have more time then we did yesterday- well, until this evening with the press- plenty of time, plenty of time-"

He looked to Sarah and Charlie, as if only just remembering they were there. "Pardon the interruption, but we have to make a small de-tour before we continue our re-tour." He threw open the porch door.

"Back to the Elevator!"

* * *

Charlie had to shield his eyes and blink a bit as the Elevator rose back into the light. It was if the rest of the spectrum had ceased to exist on the Halloween side of the doors, and it was almost a shock to remember that there were colors other than pumpkin orange and ghoulish green.

“Just a quick trip up to Security,” Mr. Wonka explained, offhandedly, as the floor tilted at a steep angle, leaning with his knees to keep perfectly upright. The Elevator hit a short set of brakes and changed direction, and without looking, he stuck out his cane and stopped Charlie from sliding into the wall. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, good.” By jamming herself in a corner spine-first and spanning her hands against the Elevator’s slick sides, Sarah was just about able to stay balanced. She looked about as comfortable as she felt, and she felt rather like a spider that had managed to stick itself to the outside of a moving car. “Mr. Wonka, did it ever occur to you to put handles in this thing?”

"Huh..." Mr. Wonka seemed deep in thought as the Elevator went around a bend, holding on to Charlie as they both leaned on his cane, the end of it glowing brighter for a moment before they levelled out.

"I suppose I've considered it _now,_ thank you, Mrs. Bucket. Yes, consider it considered. Watch your left hand there, you're close to rerouting us to the marshmallow peep hatchery."

They hit another brake run and the Elevator slowed gradually, letting out a pleasant _ding!_ as they docked and the doors opened.

"We recently started remodeling and upgrading this part of the factory, thanks to a certain Michael Teevee," Mr. Wonka said, as they entered into a technicolor hallway. It reminded Sarah of the 1960s, with mid-century patterns on the walls. Wires coiled overhead in a similar manner to the Mixing Room, winding off into the distance. Charlie could hear a faint hum, but even here it was almost musical.

He followed Mr. Wonka down the swirling linoleum to a new door, nearly lost in a carpet of colorful wires that seemed to have overgrown the walls like vines. Once through the doorway, the room was large and dim, the only direct light coming from a wide staging area at the far end. At first, Charlie thought there was one big screen that covered the far wall, but he quickly realised-

-there were _dozens,_ scores, maybe hundreds, stacked ceiling-high, flickering and changing moment-by-moment, filling the space. A long command desk ran across in front, and several Oompa-Loompas were clustered at the controls, or at the monitor stations behind. As Mr. Wonka approached, a Loompa with mussed ginger ringlets and a worried expression hurried up to meet them.

"Cleanup team Gamma got out okay," she said, "but it was a close one. We're not sure what happened. We're trying to find the footage right now."

"And team Beta?"

"They were getting there just as it started-"

Charlie and Sarah were left behind as Mr. Wonka followed the first Loompa to one of the workstations.

Sarah's eyes were drawn to a different glow nearby. Another Oompa-Loompa was at a workstation that was slightly bigger then the others, seeming engaged in what he was watching and humming a tune Charlie would have found familiar.

He turned a dial, rewinding the footage. Stepping closer, Sarah could see it was a feed of what appeared to be a production line of some sort, a conveyor-belt room full of squirrels… that looked like they were... dancing?

They seemed to be moving in a sort of hurried, synchronized swarm around a single girl. Even in the washed-out color of the feed, Sarah could tell the dress she had on was bright pink.

 _"The_ _selfish tot, was never good with the things she’d got..._ _’"_ the Loompa sung to himself in a murmur, before he realized he was being watched. He paused the feed and spun in his chair.

"Oh! Hello, Mrs. Bucket!"

“...Herman?” Sarah was good with names. This Oompa-Loompa was one of the few she’d met the day before, and his matter-of-fact, persuasive friendliness had, now she had time to think on it, probably been a large part of her decision to allow the four of them- herself, her parents and her mother-in-law- to be rounded up and transplanted into the factory on literally nothing but the request of a group of tiny, enthusiastic strangers.

Sleep deprivation had probably been another big part, admittedly, but it didn’t really matter now. She motioned at the screen.

“That’s the Salt girl, isn’t it?” she managed. “She- was she- is she alright??”

Herman smiled at being remembered, his orange hair bouncing in all directions as he nodded.

"Oh, yeah, she's fine, went home yesterday after a few stitches... her father certainly seemed to have some cross words for her as well. Mr. Wonka just asked me to review all the footage from yesterday, in case we missed anything." He shrugged. “I mean, those kids were complete brats, but we’re glad they’re all okay. It’d kind of suck the fun out the whole thing if they weren’t, right?”

“The fun…?” Herman had his back to the monitor, and Sarah watched as the girl clambered up onto the conveyor belt- only to get caught and then, in a heart-stopping, terribly mute moment- she was suddenly torn in four.

Herman must have seen from her face that he’d missed something. He turned back to the screen, twisting the dial back and pausing the footage. “Aw, missed the big finish. _Nuts.”_

Sarah took a couple of aimless steps back, fetched up against a free desk, and sat down on it with a bump. From here, she had a clear view of Charlie, standing next to Mr. Wonka as he gazed up at the huge bank of screens.

_Alive and… alive._

_Oh, Sarah, what are you doing here? What sort of mother-_

“Got it, boss,” called one of the Oompa-Loompas in the group around the main controls. “Timestamp oh-three-hundred fifty-two thirty. Playback… now.”

The screens all fuzzed for a moment before they all seemed to become one screen.

It was the Mixing Room, still be-foamed and be-flooded. The three rivulets in the foam suggested that she, Charlie and Mr. Wonka must have just left recently.

The image fast-forwarded a little bit, and Sarah could now see the mass was moving, like sea-foam in a gentle tide. A team of Oompa-Loompas came into the frame, vacuums mounted on their backs as they waded, working to suck up the foam. One of them gave a bank of foam a nudge, sticking the nozzle of his vacuum straight into it.

A tug, and suddenly the Loompa was empty-handed, the apparatus disappearing into the foam. They tugged, and in the process they bumped into a table, sweets spilling onto the mass.

The blob gave another heave, and the Loompa fell on his rear, getting dragged in by the fast-disappearing tube. Another Loompa noticed as his friend shouted silently, and quickly undid his companion’s backpack before it was absorbed by the mass.

“Interesting,” said Mr. Wonka, fingers tapping thoughtfully at the top of his cane.

On the massive display, the team of Oompa-Loompas started to back off towards the door, while the fluffy blob seemed to be creeping forwards, spreading slowly, reacting to the prodding of their vacuum hoses with a weird, shivering motion that looked almost like a physical growl.

Watching this, Charlie’s eyes had gotten very wide. Sarah shook herself out of her horrified, squirrel-induced fugue and headed across to join him in the little group by the controls, and he put his hand into hers.

On the screen, the Loompas of Gamma team beat a hasty retreat the way they’d come, leaving the foam to wobble and creep across the Mixing Room floor. There wasn’t much of it- it seemed to collect itself, drawing itself up from the puddle around the Mixer into a blob about the size of a big pony, or a small cow… and then all of a sudden it _moved,_ flowing with unpleasant speed, and the footage jerked and crackled, and then-

Static.

The room was silent, and every Oompa-Loompa turned to look at Willy Wonka expectantly.

"And where is it now, is it still in there?"

"We're not sure."

"Reverse it-" Mr. Wonka twirled his finger in the air, eyes still on the screen.

The Loompa reversed the footage, the room watching as the blob upchucked the vacuum and flattened itself out.

"Stop!" Mr. Wonka said suddenly, pointing with his cane. "There, upper right, base of the mixer. Zoom."

The footage enlarged.

"Enhance. De-noise. Barn door transition."

"We're already in HD, boss," offered a Loompa.

"There!" In a sudden leap, Mr. Wonka vaulted over the console bank, cane pointing. The footage was in color, and at the tip of his cane everyone could see a yellow glow, coming from beneath the foam.

Charlie was the first to speak. He let out a gasp as he caught on.

“The Liquid Sunshine!”

Mr. Wonka’s hand flew to his breast-pocket, then slowly lowered. He sucked in a breath through his teeth- looking, on the whole, fairly sheepish.

“Oops.”

“But,” said Sarah, very deliberately, her hands still on Charlie’s shoulders, “you said. That it was. Perfectly safe.”

“Oh, the uranium’s perfectly safe, but bananas and jasmine?” Mr. Wonka shuddered with every inch of his being. _“Yeeuuck._ That’s an unholy combination, there’s no telling what it might do.”

"Mr. Wonka-" Sarah's brows furrowed as she gave Charlie’s shoulder a squeeze. "If this... _t_ _hing_ is prowling around somewhere in here, I really would be more comfortable if Charlie was out of harm’s way."

"But, Mom-"

"No. I'm sorry, Charlie, really, I am, but you'll be safer upstairs."

"Mrs. Bucket, I'm sure it will all be _fine-"_

"And that’s exactly what worries me, Mr. Wonka! You said that before, and one of your workers almost got eaten!"

Mr. Wonka opened his mouth.

"No," Sarah said. "We can talk about this later. Come on, Charlie." She took her son’s hand, and started to lead him back the way they came.

"Ugh." Mr. Wonka huffed, leaning on his cane. "I'll never understand mothers..." He looked to the nearest Loompa for support. She just nervously looked away, avoiding eye contact. He sighed.

"When you're right, you're right, Evangaline. Fine. Say hi to the little ones for me. Keep me informed if it pops up again."

"Aye, aye!" Evangaline smiled, turning back to work as Mr. Wonka strode out.


	4. Taffy & Trepidation

Back out in the corridor, Sarah and Charlie waited by the Elevator. Charlie fidgeted, glancing back down the garish corridor, worried and upset. Sarah, in contrast, had pressed the button that was clearly _supposed_ to open the Elevator’s doors maybe fifteen times, and her temper was only rising with every futile push.

And perhaps she wouldn’t have been so aggravated, if a big part of her anger hadn’t been directed right at herself. On a level she didn’t want to acknowledge, she could see herself clearly as she must look to Charlie right now- a complete wet blanket, standing in her son’s light, spoiling something that should have been a fantastic dream. Sensible, boring Sarah, dragging Charlie out of this cave of wonders as soon as things got too _exciting._

She fussed with her son’s hair, smoothing the last tangles from their breezy Elevator ride. She knew he was disappointed, and that he’d try to hide that disappointment to cheer her up, in the same way he’d refuse to eat her portion of supper when she tried to make him take it. It was just how he was. Nature had made him a giver, his heart and hands always open, and his empty pockets didn’t change that one bit. He always found something to give, even if it was only a look, or a hug, or just the right words.

"Oh, Charlie..." She knelt a little. "I know I probably look like a stick-in-the-mud, but I just... I wasn't HERE yesterday, and I’m sure Mr. Wonka must have good intentions, but I think sometimes he thinks a little faster than his feet can keep up with-"

Suddenly, Charlie disappeared. In fact, _everything_ disappeared, as the hallway was plunged into darkness. Charlie let out a startled noise, and Sarah felt him cling to her in surprise as she hugged him close. She heard the sound of footsteps at the end of the hallway, picking up, getting faster.

"Charlie? Mrs. Bucket?"

"Over here!" Sarah called, and Mr. Wonka came into view, the purple glow from his cane lighting the underside of his chin. "Don't panic, just a power cut, the backups should be kicking in soon. Any luck with the Elevator?"

“Oh, and when _should_ we panic, Mr. Wonka?” Sarah jabbed the button that should have summoned the Elevator a couple of times more for good measure. “Before or after somebody gets torn apart by squirrels?”

From somewhere deep below them, there was a solid, heavy _KA-CHUNK_ , a whir of meshing machinery, and then the corridor flickered back into existence as a set of emergency strip-lights sputtered on overhead. They were a dim blue-violet hue, powerful but muted. The untucked tail of Charlie’s shirt and Sarah’s tired blue hair-ribbon lit up a bright weird white under their glow, and Mr. Wonka’s cuffs, buttons and neat pocket square shone a crazy spotted green.

 _“Pardonnez-moi, ma chère lavette...”_ He extended an arm, politely shepherding her out the way and poking the call-button with the tip of his cane. It let out a calm _ding!,_ and the glass doors opened at once.

“What did I tell you? My emergency generators are three-hundred-percent fail-safe. Sugar power- you can’t beat it.”

“D’you think,” started Charlie, anxiously, as they stepped inside, “that the power cut could have had anything to do with the... _Thing?”_

"Nonsense," said Mr. Wonka.

"Absolutely," said Sarah, at the same time.

Mr. Wonka kept his mouth in a tight line as Sarah pressed the button for the penthouse. Mothers were quite like baggage sometimes. Part of a set that you had to lug around. Sometimes, to get to the child, you had to go through the mother. Chocolate has antioxidants, helps with blood pressure, keeps the spirit joyful... they all needed to be reminded.

He knew Charlie was on board with this wildly wonderful new venture, but he felt like he was losing Mrs. Bucket. He wanted to impress her, and he could see the glimpses every now and again of wonder in her eyes, but then that pesky _motherness_ would set back in.

"We'll get you home, I'll take care of this thing, and it should all be wrapped up long before tonight's press conference," he said, as the Elevator started to rise. The words were barely out of his mouth, however, before the car jerked to a stop.

"Mr. Wonka?"

"I got it-"

He was just about to press the penthouse button again, when the Elevator plunged straight downwards.

“Charlie, hold on!” gasped Sarah, wrapping her arms around Charlie as she braced herself, as much as she could with nothing to hang on to. The terrifying drop only lasted a few seconds, but it seemed like an absolute eternity. The Elevator jerked and slowed, and the buck of the whole car as it hit the unseen brakes bounced its passengers into the air.

There was a tense silence.

“I think we’re okay, Mom,” said Charlie, at last. He sounded very muffled, because his face was buried in her cardigan and she’d hiked him so far off his feet that his toes weren’t even touching the floor. She let him down, hand still tightly in hers, pushing her scattered hair out of her face as she looked warily around.

The Elevator had landed them in a light-blue, smooth-walled antechamber. There were doors and observation windows set here and there along the walls, uneven and deeply-recessed, more like features carved from smooth stone by an experimental sculptor than regular architecture. The hum of industry was louder here, close and harmonious, like an arrangement for several hundred invisible machines.

"Oh good, the emergency brakes _do_ still work," Mr. Wonka mumbled to himself as he hopped out of the doors. "Perhaps it’s best if we take the scenic route home. Or do you want to try the Elevator again, Mrs. Bucket?" His look back was innocent enough, but a grownup could read the subtext loud and clear.

Sarah sighed, keeping hold of Charlie’s hand.

"This better be a _direct_ route," she said, as they walked out. Mr. Wonka reached into his tailcoat, pulling out a small packet. He unfolded it, then unfolded it again, and again and again and again until he had to hold his arms out at their complete wingspan so he could see the map in its entirety.

"I believe we're in the Taffy Wing, so just a hop, skip, and a jump over… mmmhm... and then down around… yes... then through... or we could take the... no, no... we'll go... which will lead us to... aha! Yes! Wonderful! Delightful! We'll have you home in no time at all."

An ominous rumble shuddered gently through the room, like a giant clearing its throat. Mr. Wonka lowered the map slowly, until he was visible from the nose up, then made a rapid lunge for the biggest observation window, somewhat held up by the enormous sheet of paper, which seemed to be actively fighting him as he tried to get it folded away.

Charlie and Sarah followed him. The window, which was big and long and shaped like a lopsided oval, looked out over a tall blue-painted room filled with machines in constant motion. It looked like a fabric mill, or a collection of huge hydraulic presses, except instead of weaving cloth or tempering metal the giant, ever-looping arms of the machines were each constantly at work pulling and rolling and stretching great long ropes of taffy of every color of the rainbow. The movement in the room was unrelenting, hypnotic, like watching a whole fairground full of pendulum rides operating all at once.

A handful of Oompa-Loompas were at work here, in pale-blue dungarees with white swirls on them like the very taffy they were pulling. All of them seemed to be paused, looking towards the arched opening to the room, and what was oozing through the seams of the golden doors, held shut by a pair of Loompas.

Mr. Wonka squinted, leaning in. “What’s-”

Suddenly there was a rush and flood of noise over the sound of the taffy pullers, a gush of liquid bursting through the spaces in the hinges and between the doors. The pair of Loompas went sprawling, coming to rest against a table heaped with cooling taffy as the tide deposited them.

“It’s the thing from before!” Charlie exclaimed.

The foam pulled itself back together into a gelatinous mass, the top of the mound pointing in the air as if it were sniffing. One Loompa- his amber jumpsuit showing that this was his forte- was already up at it with a vacuum hose. The blob immediately latched on to the tube, and Sarah watched aghast as the now-blocked funnel made the backpack- and by extension its owner- start to vibrate. The Loompa was lifted nearly out of his shoes, his comrades trying to grab him, before the mound threw him into a table, which broke and spilled quartered taffies onto the floor.

“I’ve got to get in there-” Mr. Wonka said, hurriedly, going to the windowed door just next to them. He reached deep into his pants pocket, and pulled out the largest ring of keys either Bucket had ever seen. It was a leviathan on a ring, a clump of keys of all kinds hanging from it; car keys, safe keys, caravan keys, tubular keys, church keys, transponders, mortice keys, even a little Wonka Bar keychain. Mr. Wonka tucked his cane in the pit of his arm as he started trying them one by one.

As he frantically tried key after key, the thing in the Taffy Room coiled itself up like a bulky swirl of whipped cream and rolled towards the nearest pulling-machine. Again, it made the same weird shuddering, sniffing movement, and this time it began to leech swiftly across the floor towards the long robotic arm and the mass of hanging taffy, backing the workers who had been manning the machine up against the bank of controls.

Sarah cast a desperate look around the antechamber. It was bare and tidy, and she couldn’t see anything in the way of moveables- that was, until she spotted the fire extinguisher, barely half-sized but still a welcome reminder of a saner world, mounted on the wall by the Elevator. Before she could think better of it, she darted across and wrenched it from its straps.

“Charlie,” she said, grimly, bearing down on the big window with the heavy thing in both hands, “don’t you get any ideas from this, all right? And whatever you do- stay- PUT!”

Like a clumsy batter at the plate, she swung at the window. The fire extinguisher bounced off the glass, once, knocking a single fat chip from the center of the pane, and with the momentum she swung again with all her strength and a short, feral yell of effort that would have made a pro tennis-player proud. The glass shivered to pieces, raining down on the floor.

She smashed awkwardly at the bigger chunks of glass sticking up out of the frame, clearing the way, then hitched up her skirt and scrambled over onto the gantry inside.

“Got it!” Mr. Wonka said, triumphantly, as the lock clicked. He looked back to his companions only to find Charlie standing there, alone, next to an abandoned fire extinguisher and a hole in the window.

The chocolatier’s face dropped, and he flinched as Sarah yanked the door open from the other side.

“Come on!”

He scrambled up, nearly tripping on his own feet as he joined Sarah on the metal walkway. Some of the blob had spread over the dropped taffies, and as they watched it froze, letting out a low, pondering growl. Suddenly the thing quivered, waning backwards, and its surface stretched, curling like the swirls of taffy it had just consumed.

Despite the chaos, the pulling machines still drummed their beat in steady time.

_Another day, another matter_

_First the children, now a beast!_

_This oddly little bit of smatter_

_Has made our taffy an impromptu feast!_

“Uh-oh. The singing’s never good,” Charlie said, from the doorway.

Mr. Wonka wasted no time, cane at the ready as he hurried down the metal steps to the ground level.

_Courage, Loompas, you know the drill_

_For it’s all under control_

_This is not a bitter pill_

_There’s a guest we must cajole..._

Oh, God, and Mr. Wonka was singing too, clenching his teeth and nodding exaggeratedly back to Sarah as he held his cane at the ready like a sword. She bridled.

“Cajole??”

At that moment, the thing snapped round on Mr. Wonka with a gelatinous squelch. The Loompas who had been cornered took the opportunity to scramble over the control panel to safety, the foremost reaching back to grab their companions and haul them over.

The thing quivered, rearing back. It was impossible to deny that somehow, between the Mixing Room and this moment, it had gotten bigger. It was about the size of a decent family car, now, and as Mr. Wonka sized it up, all of a sudden it snapped out a long club-like extrusion, quick and rubbery as a frog’s tongue, right at his knees. He leapt back on his toes, parrying it with his cane, ducked another snapping strand as it scythed at his head, and arched his back like a bullfighter to avoid a third, before diving out of the way.

Taking the steps to the ground floor two at a time, Sarah clattered past several Loompas who seemed to have decided that the top priority, given the situation, was assembling a ranged chorus on the mezzanine.

_You’d better think of something fast_

_Dear Willy, entre nous..._

_Chewing the scenery’s always a blast_

_But this scenery could chew you!_

“Watch it!” Sarah shouted as Mr. Wonka dashed down a row of machines, the blob roaring after him.

_A beast like this shall need a name_

_It’s our duty to provide one_

_So the books will have something to blame_

_For the demise of Willy Wonka!_

“Not helping!” Mr. Wonka shouted as he dodged another rubbery protrusion. Up on the gantry, Charlie gripped the metal railing, looking down at the chaos and barely noticing the quartet of Loompas on either side of him.

_It’s blobulous like a vermicious Knid_

_Yet quick just like a cheetah_

_Perhaps ‘The Whifflesnoodle Squid’_

_Or ‘The Infamous Amoeba...’_

Mr. Wonka squeezed between two puller machines and the blob followed, growling and rippling as it absorbed more taffy. Its texture had begun to look a lot more opaque, as the thick taffy melded with it.

_This creeping terror just will not stop_

_Its superfluous sugar snacking_

_How fortunate for the hideous sop_

_It’s in candy manufacturing!_

“It’s getting bigger!” Sarah stared up in horror as the thing sucked up the underside of the taffy-puller’s robot arm and down the other side, snuffling up the rope of spun sugar as it went.

“Weren’t you paying attention to the lyrics? It’s eating the taffy!” called Mr. Wonka, from the next aisle. There was a wrenching, grinding moan of metal as the arm bent under the thing’s new mass, depositing it in the passageway right in front of him with a heavy _glup,_ the last of the machine’s load of taffy disappearing into it like a strand of slurped spaghetti. “And its table manners are terrible!”

_And when it’s done munching this batch,_ chanted the Loompas,

_And crunching Willy, God forbid,_

_It might just start on us-_

_“Mom! Catch!!”_ yelled Charlie, as Sarah raced down the aisle below his gantry, a gloopy strand keeping pace with her as it snaked down the wall. As she looked up, he heaved the fire extinguisher over the edge of the railing.

 _“That’s my Charlie,”_ Sarah caught it like a football as she ran, and slammed it against the tentacle as it snapped off the wall towards her, swatting it back on itself and sandwiching it against the powder-blue steel. There was a sound best described as a bubbly yelp and the strand slunk back, retracting into the mass as it wound between the machines. She watched it go, the dented metal canister dangling from her fingers, then took off in the direction Mr. Wonka had vanished in, calling back to Charlie as she went.

_“That’s my kid!”_

Mr. Wonka had absconded three rows down, deeply entrenched in battle with the blob as it tried to eat his cane. As Sarah rounded the corner, it latched on, and Mr. Wonka nearly lost his hat as the thing tugged. He pulled back, cane glowing as they engaged in a tug-of-war.

Sarah looked around. The only other thing in the room was candy, and that clearly wasn’t helping. The Loompas were _oohing_ and _ahhing_ with each dramatic swipe and dodge. Sarah remembered there was a fire extinguisher in her hand and hoisted it up, finding and pulling the pin.

_Before Wonka’s magic hits the chopper_

_(And losing him would be a shock)_

_We believe we’ve found a name that’s proper_

_Beware the terrible_ _**Sucrosine Glok!** _

“Get back!” Sarah shouted, and Mr. Wonka skittered away just in time before she squeezed the handle and the monster was engulfed in the freezing chemical.

Whatever strange sugary reactions were taking place in the newly-named Glok’s heaving mass, it certainly wasn’t a fan of the spray. It let out a howl- an uncanny gluey note that Sarah felt right down in her ribs- and its splotchy surface turned frosty pale where the chemical hit it, the icy rime spreading like freezer burn.

Sarah kept the nozzle trained on the thing, praying it wouldn’t run dry. Just as the stream started to falter, the Glok seemed to decide it had had enough. Folding rapidly back in on itself with a horrible elasticity, it sucked its whole bulk into a narrow gap between two machines, and glooped itself out of sight.

Charlie dashed to the other side of the gantry, just to see the very tail end of the thing snaking into one of the grated drains that ran down the centre of the floor.

“It’s gone!”

Sarah dropped the spent fire extinguisher with a resounding _clanng._

“And good riddance. Mr. Wonka? Are you all right?”

He was on the floor, groaning as he sat up and adjusted his hat so he could see. He got to his feet, breathing heavily and leaning on his cane. He had that distant face again, the one that said he was thinking.

"Mr. Wonka!" Charlie called, as he reached the bottom of the stairs, shoes squeaking on the linoleum. His voice seemed to snap his mentor back from whatever mental rut he was entrenched in.

"Charlie! You alright? No scratches? No cosmetic scars you can pass off as being from a bear attack to your friends?"

"I'm fine!”

Mr. Wonka looked back, seeming to remember Sarah was there, and his face fell. He looked embarrassed, unsure, like he was so ready to play this off as he always had, to say things were fine and that all would be well, best to carry on.

But instead, he looked like he'd lost.

"Thank you, Mrs. Bucket," he said, shortly. "For your assistance."

Seeing him wrong-footed, deflated and completely serious for once, was so at odds with his normal demeanour that Sarah was quite taken aback. She was spared from answering for the moment by the arrival of her son, who was hopping on his toes and practically exploding with awe.

“That- was- _amazing!_ The- the way you-” He mimed, swashbuckling wildly and making appropriate noises, and Sarah had to lean back as an imaginary cane whistled past her nose. “And, and Mom was all, “HwpPCHOW _BONNG…”_ Another enthusiastic pantomime. “She smacked that thing into next _week!!_ Did you see??”

Sarah let out a breath that was more like an embarrassed chuckle, shrugging her shabby cardigan straight as she gave Charlie a one-armed hug. “Well, wherever it went, Charlie, I don’t think it’s going to stay out of action for very long. What about that drain, Mr. Wonka? Where does it lead?”

Mr. Wonka smiled silently at Charlie’s flourish, before Sarah’s words brought him back to reality. His face fell again.

"Ah. That should lead to the uh, utility corridors," Mr. Wonka said, pointing limply with his cane, before looking to Sarah. "I understand if you don't want to come, I should do this on my own-"

"Oh no, Mr. Wonka." Sarah put her foot down. "There’s a candy-eating monster loose in a _chocolate_ factory, and while I’m sure a man as, as brilliant as you is clever enough to take it down, it never hurts to have a helping hand, does it?" She held out her hand.

Mr. Wonka froze, looking down to his hand, then to her, then to Charlie.

"But- I promised-"

"And you can _keep_ keeping that promise as we go. Now, go on, Charlie is always telling me about how ‘amazingly wonderful’ you are, don’t stop proving it now.”

Slowly, like air inflating a balloon, Mr. Wonka’s face brightened. He took her hand, giving it a firm shake.

“Right! No time to lose!” And he was back, keeping hold of Sarah’s hand as he thrust his cane forwards. “No time to dally when trouble awaits! We have to track it before it can gobble up any more product!”

“Or any people,” Sarah added. “If that thing-’

“The Glok-”

“-keeps growing, no part of this entire place is going to be safe anyway. Charlie’s grandparents are still up there, and they’re not about to be-” She waved a hand, in a shadow of Charlie’s invisible buccaneering. “-engaging in single combat, any time soon.”

“Grandpa Joe would!” Charlie interjected.

“Yes, he would,” admitted Sarah, dryly. “Honestly, that’s even more reason to keep this thing as far away from him as possible.”

“Speaking of which.” Mr. Wonka hopped through the scattered carpet of taffy squares and wrappers deftly without denting a single one, and unhooked the ubiquitous speaker-phone by the Taffy Room’s proper entrance. “Theo, initiate soft lockdown. I want everyone on high alert, full containment procedure. Seal off the dorms, leave no Loompa behind. You know, just like Black Friday weekend.” He dropped his voice, as dramatic as humanly possible.

“Godspeed.”

The result was instantaneous, red lights on the walls flaring up as the remaining Loompas all moved to the doors in single file. One of them passed a keycard to Mr. Wonka. It was almost the size of a chocolate bar, complete with the ‘W’ logo.

"Thaaannk you!" He took it, placing it in his pocket without looking as he pulled another copy of the map from his coat, opening it all the way before compressing it down again. "We've got to try to block it in."

"What was that?" Charlie asked, pointing to his pocket.

"Skeleton keycard," Mr. Wonka explained. "Used in lockdown situations. Should help me bypass things, to close doors quicker should we need it. Right!" He stuffed the map back into his coat. "Same pace as yesterday, Buckets, keep on my heels, and do try not to touch anything you're not supposed to. _Allons!"_


	5. Cocoa & Compassion

If this was the same pace as yesterday, Sarah could only feel sorry for her son’s short legs, not to mention her father-in-law’s rickety back and blood pressure. Mr. Wonka moved as if he was being chased by wasps and refused to admit it. He was like the world’s most dapper mallwalker, or someone with a dentists’ appointment in three minutes and no patience for late fees.

The utility corridors were bright and tiled, faintly curved and lined with a whole network of smallish copper pipes. Most of these, Mr. Wonka explained as they half-walked, half-jogged along, were drainage or waste-water of some kind, headed for the factory’s purification plants. From the drains in the Taffy Room, there was only one certain route the Glok could have taken, and he led them through the maze with his eyes on the pipes as if they were clearly labelled in an invisible language only he could see.

They came to a four-way junction in the corridor and stopped, giving Sarah and Charlie a moment to catch their breath. Mr. Wonka traced a particular copper pipe along the ceiling with the tip of his cane, finding it proceeded straight ahead of them.

"Should be... ahah!" He switched tracks, cane following a perpendicular pipe that looked the exact same. Without warning, he dashed sharply to the right. Sarah groaned as they set off again. How could a man power-walk so fast?

"Mr. Wonka, where are we going?" shouted Charlie, as he tried to keep up.

"Yeeee-haw!" Mr. Wonka gave a little skip and a jump, jogging backwards so he could face his apprentice. "We're bound for the Chocolate Room! If we get t' the chocolate waterfall’s utility room before it does, we can head the varmint off at th' pass and send it up a different pipe! HYA!"

How could a man power-walk so fast WHILE doing a Texan accent?

"'Chocolate room?' Isn't- more or less every room- in here a- chocolate room?" panted Sarah, her sentences coming out rather unevenly diced as she hurried to keep pace. The corridor was beginning to slant upwards, and she started to hear a gentle, growing background rushing and roaring, made strange and tinny by the shiny tiles all around them.

Charlie had barely more puff left than she did, but he still found breath to laugh with expectant delight as he tailed Mr. Wonka across another little intersection, turning back eagerly to catch at her hand.

"Wait till you see it, Mom," he told her. "I mean- y'all jes' hang onto yer hats now! _Giddyap!"_

"I can't 'giddyap' much more than this, Charlie," Sarah huffed. "I'm getting a stitch."

Finally, mercifully, they came to a dead end, as all the pipes took a hard right-angle turn to soar upwards. Mr. Wonka braked, spatted shoes sliding on the tiles, and hooked open a door to his immediate right with his cane. Sunshine spilled in, and Mr. Wonka let out a triumphant little "Haha!" before hopping through and out of sight.

Sarah and Charlie followed, but Sarah only made it a step or two before she froze.

The smell of chocolate hung in the air, sweet and warm, yet with the feeling of a fresh spring breeze. The grass under Sarah's boots, while it looked like any other grass, had a slight glimmering, iridescent quality to it, as if sugar was laced into it.

They were on the other side of the chocolate river, Charlie noted, as he spotted the bridge the Oompa-Loompas had crossed the first time he saw them. He could see the bush where he and Grandpa Joe had plucked candied flowers, the sugar-plum trees Veruca had been demanding her father procure for her, the riverbank and pipe where he'd seen Augustus disappear.

And yet it was still magical, a place of dreams and pure imagination.

Mr. Wonka had run down the slope of the embankment to a door set into the rock near the base of the chocolate waterfall, pulling out his skeleton keycard.

Sarah took a couple of wondering steps, her hands loosely knotted together near her throat. The huge waterfall churned and rolled, beating on the cinder-toffee rocks and spilling into the lagoon. Every plant and tree growing along the path was another baffling work of art- heavy peppermint-bark oaks with shiny chocolate acorns hiding under their scalloped sugar leaves, wispy fern-fronds of candied angelica uncoiling where the light touched them… under her worn shoes the path was of polished candy pebbles, speckled and tumbled smooth in soft sandstone shades.

She put out a hand to the nearest bush, which at first glance seemed to have multicolored flowers that stirred and trembled all on their own. At her touch, the carpet of color took off, and a flurry of butterflies whirled into the air around her. One rested on her hand, and before it whisked away she saw how its wings were glassy jewels of spun-sugar, each like a tiny stained-glass window.

There was a candy-eating monster rampaging through the factory close by, and a hundred and one other cares and worries in the world besides, but in this bright warm moment of time as she stood and watched the butterflies fluttering away into the soft misty haze along the river, none of it seemed to matter.

Charlie quietly took her hand, and as he looked up at his mom, he saw something glisten on her cheek.

"Hold your breath..."

It was like the voice was the only sound in the world.

"Make a wish..."

Sarah turned.

"Count to three."

Mr. Wonka was standing in the doorway of the utility room, feet together with both hands set atop his cane. He was waiting, as if holding his breath, but not in anticipation. In fact, she'd never seen him so still.

"Charlie? I'll let you do the honors." Mr. Wonka smiled.

"It's all candy, Mom. This is the room Grandpa Joe and I tried to tell you about- isn't it wonderful?"

“It’s…”

Sarah didn’t have the words. If everything had its equal and opposite- if everything hard and sordid, grinding and exhausting about her life day-to-day could be simply flipped inside out in one stroke- the result would surely look and feel like this place. Everything around her, the sights, sounds, smells, the feeling in her chest- all of it was the sheer pure antithesis of the things out there in the world- and God knows, there were enough of them- that were harsh, cold and unkind.

She could barely talk, but as she squeezed her son’s hand she looked across to where Mr. Wonka stood, and their eyes met. Her face said more than she could possibly have said aloud, but she still tried. She had to. It felt like all she could do, the _least_ she could do, to stammer out even a word of how she felt.

“I… it’s…” She took a deep, grounding breath of the warm, sweet air. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

His answering smile wasn’t one of patronization or _I-_ _told_ _-_ _you_ _-_ _so..._ no, it was an expression of knowing.

All in one moment he felt silly for ever doubting her, silly for thinking for one second that she was just a hard, hollow, blinded grownup like the other parents had been. But, oh, no, not at all. She wasn’t even close. He knew that spark in her eye. It was the same spark Charlie had.

 _I s_ _uppose he had to get it from somewhere,_ Mr. Wonka thought.

“I’m so glad you like it.” He looked human, like he was actually using his cane as he crossed over to them. He paused, plucking a yellow flower from the bush next to Sarah, and he offered it to her.

“This one, you _can_ actually take a bite out of,” he chuckled.

She took it, and an open, genuine smile lit up her own face in response. There was a lot of Charlie in it, now that he was looking properly. A generous helping of the same bright warmth, muted by her adults’ sense of care and restraint but still strong underneath.  
She had to brush her eyes on the frayed cuff of her cardigan before she tried the pale sugar rose for herself.

“And you made... all of this,” she said. “It must have taken you...”

“Seventeen and a half years,” Mr. Wonka finished, softly. Charlie gave him a big silent thumbs-up of a grin, and he smiled back. “Worth every minute. It means... more to me, then I could ever say."

He set a gentle hand on the peppermint bark of the tree next to him before casting his eyes upwards to its branches. He was in his own world again, but this time the smile stayed on his face.

"By the way, I never got to mention it to you, Charlie. I believe your grandfather was just about to ask this before a certain Master Gloop interrupted us…" He turned back with absolute glee, and pointed to the cascading chocolate. "The waterfall isn't just for show, it churns and mixes the chocolate to give it an even spread, one of my finest secrets. Now I'm just waiting for those other chocolate-makers to catch on to the fact that nothing beats the power of a waterfall."

Charlie scrambled up the outcrop of scratchy toffee rocks- always keeping a respectful distance from the banks of the chocolate lagoon. He surveyed the waterfall from his lofty perch, a hand shading his eyes like a very small Dr. Livingstone, taking eager note of the way the thick melted chocolate rolled dark and heavy down the fall, and how much lighter it became as it eddied and roiled in the tumult below.

Sarah, emerging by degrees from her reverie, blinked as she recalled the reason for their visit. “Mr. Wonka… what about the pipes? Did you manage to cut that thing off?”

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Wonka, moving past Charlie to a chest of tools close to the riverbank. He hooked the handle of a ceramic mug with the end of his cane. "I diverted it to one of the empty fudge-storage tanks. It should be able to hold it until we figure out what to do with it," he continued, hanging onto a tree with one hand while reaching his cane out with the other. With a smoothness that suggested he'd done this dozens of times before, he took a healthy scoop from the chocolate river. He reeled the cup back in and took a taste, looking up towards the brim of his hat as the liquid chocolate melted onto his tongue.

"Perfect! Flavor is back to its proper purity. Here, Charlie-" He passed the mug. "You're skin and bone, dear boy, you need this more than I do."

One mouthful of the rich, creamy hot chocolate gave Charlie the sort of unstoppable grin that digs a physical ache behind the crook of ones’ ear. He’d barely noticed, throughout this whole crazy chain of happenings, that they’d skipped lunch, partly because there’d hardly been time to slow down and think, but partly because he’d grown used _-_ as far as a healthy, growing eleven-year-old could do, anyway- to just dealing with feeling hungry. With absolutely nothing he could usually do about the nasty, pinched feeling in his stomach, the idea of just being able to ward it off and _eat_ something whenever it crept in was a fantastic concept.

Sarah smiled at Charlie’s clear, ear-to-ear appreciation, but although she was only glad for him there was also a deep twinge of guilt. There always was, when she considered how he was small for his age, and whenever, despite his instinctive sense of tact for her feelings, he couldn’t help talking so avidly about food and treats she couldn’t afford to give him. She was his mother, and there was nobody to blame but herself.

She was so lost in her thoughts she didn't notice Mr. Wonka until he was right next to her, gently pushing a second mug into her hand.

"You look like you need one too, Mrs. Bucket," he said, kindly. "Chocolate is good for the spirit."

Their eyes met for the briefest of moments before Mr. Wonka looked away, suddenly very interested in the caramel-covered apple in his hand with one bite already taken out of it.

Sarah wrapped her hands around the warm mug.

“Sarah,” she said. “It’s Sarah.”

Mr. Wonka, despite his showmanship and his dapper air and all his pomp and circumstance, was occasionally easy to read when it came to genuine expressions. His smile was grounding, human and unrehearsed.

"A pleasure, Sarah." He clinked his apple gently against her mug. Their eyes met, and this time, he didn't look away. He thought yet again on how much her eyes were like Charlie’s, filled with glimmers of that undeniable spark. Sarah Bucket, who worked three jobs, who cared for two sets of parents, who raised a boy that was going to make a wonderful chocolatier. Mr. Wonka had to admit there was a lot to admire about her.

_Yes. Charlie had to get it from somewhere._

"Mr. Wonka?" Charlie asked, licking a moustache of chocolate from his lip. Mr. Wonka flinched a little, a rare moment of unhidden surprise as Charlie startled him. "You said the chocolate river runs through the factory?"

"Indeed it does! To every room that needs chocolate, which is a _lot,_ I couldn't even get started saying how-"

"It’s a good thing we stopped the Glok from getting to it then, huh?"

"OOF, _da,"_ Mr. Wonka breathed. "That would certainly be berry, _berry_ bad."

Charlie swallowed a giggle with the last of his hot chocolate, and slid from his perch atop the cinder-toffee rocks. He would happily have spent all day in the Chocolate Room, but if there was one thing better than their astounding surroundings, it was that Mr. Wonka wasn’t regarding his mom as if she was something he needed to quarantine before she could do any damage, and his mom wasn’t eyeing Mr. Wonka as if he was some weird hybrid of a mad ferret and a parrot. The mood had shifted, and it wasn’t just because the Glok had been trapped.

Charlie was a perceptive boy, as sensitive to other people’s thoughts and feelings as any barely-eleven-year-old could be expected to be. He could tell that the sense of awkward, mistrustful tension between his mother and his mentor had started to unwind itself at last, like an overstretched nerve finally left to relax.

* * *

The Security Room was a lot quieter than it had been when the trio had visited earlier, only a skeleton staff of Oompa-Loompas left to monitor the multitude of screens. Although technically their task was to keep an eye on the Glok, almost all of them were currently clustered around one of the workstations.

As the fuzzy figure of Charlie on the monitor scrambled down the rocks by the chocolate lagoon, Herman sat back. His nose had almost been touching the screen.

“You know,” he said, “I think this might just work out.”

There was a general murmur of satisfaction, and a shuffling in the small crowd as a few sneaky side-bets changed hands. The Loompa who had been playing shrill, suspenseful thriller-movie chords on his violin stopped and put up his bow, much to everyone’s relief- no-one could deny that it was necessary, but it had been starting to grate a little.

“I could’ve told you that.” Perdia was eating popcorn. “You know him, he’s not the kind of guy to overreact just ‘cause things don’t go completely his way.”

There was a silence. Perdia found herself the centre of attention, as everyone turned quietly to look at her. She stopped chewing, and swallowed.

“What?”

“We are still talking about the same guy, here, right?” said Herman. “The boss? Willy Wonka? Tall, phenomenal fashion sense, once composed an entire requiem for himself because he stubbed his toe on the stairs?”

“Okay, you have a point,” admitted Perdia. “But I knew they’d-”

“Oh, _snozzcumbers,”_ said a Loompa, suddenly, from the back of the crowd. As the rest of them turned to look, they saw that he was staring across the room to another screen.

Herman took one look and grabbed for the big red emergency phone at his elbow. “Time to test your theory, Perdy,” he said, as the rotary dial clicked and spun. “He is gonna _hate_ this.”

* * *

“…So, from here, it-”

Mr. Wonka was mid-explanation, when the sound of a ringing phone cut through the rush of the waterfall.

“Oop, be back in a tick.” He took another big bite of his caramelized apple as he crossed the grass back to the open door of the utility room.

Charlie set his mug politely on the top of the tool-box before going to his mother. He was used to this, trying to find the right words to lift her spirits, but this time he didn’t need to. Instead, Sarah just laughed and wiped the last remaining bastion of chocolate from his lip.

“I think this is going to turn out wonderful, don’t you, Mom?”

“Yes.” She had a smile Charlie hadn’t seen since he won his ticket. “Yes, I do, Charlie.”

A gasp, a clatter of plastic, and the Buckets both looked over just in time to see Mr. Wonka scramble to pick the speaker-phone’s receiver back up, yanking its coiled cord to make it pop into the air before catching it and holding it to his ear once more.

“Are you sure?” He noticed Sarah and Charlie were watching, and gave a weak, reflexive smile before turning his back to them.

“Oh boy,” Sarah sighed, her shoulders sagging. “Now what?”

The lights flickered overhead, and from somewhere deep in the bowels of the factory, there was a deep, bassy BANG. A tremor ran through the Chocolate Room, stirring the foliage gently overhead and sending a faint dancing tremble across the swirling surface of the lagoon.

Mr. Wonka hung up the phone. He seemed to steel himself before turning back towards the other two, his neat crushed-velvet lapels hiking up almost to his ears as he breathed in deeply.

“The Glok is still growing,” he said. “Exponentially. It’s breached the storage tank, and it’s loose in the pipeworks. Charlie, Sarah…” A deep breath. “Fun and games aside...”

He had to stop and pull a face, as if the phrase tasted unutterably foul in his mouth. “Uughh, and I do not say that lightly... or ever. But, there’s a thing for every first, and with _this_ thing I actually do think you’d both be better off-”

“No,” said Sarah.

“No way!” said Charlie.

Sarah put her arm around her son. “We’d be ‘better off’ finding a way to stop the darn thing as quickly as possible,” she said. “You’re not just shooing us off now.”

Charlie was the picture of determination, given that determination was less than four and a half foot tall with a smudge of chocolate on its nose. “And if the Glok thinks we’re just gonna let it eat our factory, it’s got another thing coming!”

Mr. Wonka’s face lifted, in a seesaw reaction to his shoulders coming down.

"Our factory indeed, Charlie."

His pint-sized apprentice offered a fist, which Mr. Wonka bumped. He started to busy about, peering behind him before turning in a small circle.

"Looking for this?" Sarah handed him his cane.

"Not anymore! Thank you! Now-" He lurched forward as if the cane propelled him, before his feet caught up. "Back to the Elevator!"

"Are you sure about that, Mr. Wonka?" Charlie shouted, on his heels.

"It's the only thing fast enough to catch up to this viscous vermin, Charlie! The game is afoot!"

* * *

Back in the Elevator, back in the blurring befuddlement of up and down, left and right and occasionally backwards, Charlie and Sarah quickly lost track of any sense of where they were in relation to anything else they’d seen so far that day. Mr. Wonka clearly knew where he was going, however, and soon the jumble of different rooms and close tunnels gave way to the wide, warm-lit vaults they’d traversed earlier, brickwork and pipes everywhere, the Elevator weaving through the stout, arching army of columns which, Charlie supposed, must hold up the entire factory above.

 _“Chocolate News!”_ Eyes fixed on the tracks ahead, Mr. Wonka spoke into the top of his cane as if it was a microphone, his voice a pitch-perfect pastiche of a news-anchor’s smooth, cheesy drawl. His free hand hovered, fingers spread, over the Elevator’s manual controls. “We’re coming to you live from the path of the Glok’s ravenous rampage. Reports are coming in that the beast is just up ahead, aiming straight for the Grand Canal. Heaven help us all if it gets there, viewers, it’ll have unlimited access to the entire factory’s supply of liquid chocolate. And now a word from our junior field correspondent Charlie Bucket, Charlie, what’s your take on this sticky situation?”

Charlie grabbed the cane as it was poked under his nose. “We need to distract it before it gets there!”

“You heard it here first, folks!” Mr. Wonka hit a button, and the Elevator slewed sideways onto a branching track, speeding in the direction he’d pointed.

"There!" Charlie pointed below. Mr. Wonka held his finger down on another button, and the Elevator slowed. The Glok was massive now, roughly the size of a package freighter truck. The taffy had settled into an even, sky-blue sheen. Streaks of chocolate-brown ran down its sides.

"Are you sure that fudge storage tank was empty? " Sarah asked, as they hovered above it.

"A good forty-seven percent sure."

"Mr. Wonka-"

"I said it was a GOOD forty-seven percent..."

The Elevator sped forward, easily overtaking the shuffling mass as it slid its way through the pipe-lined chasm. Mr. Wonka pressed a button labelled 'CRUISE CONTROL' and the Elevator kept its speed, the doors opening to face the Glok.

"If it's got a taste of chocolate, it's going to be hard to dissuade it from going towards the river," said Mr. Wonka, peering down. "It is fair though, I do make very good chocolate.” He sighed, adjusting his bowtie before leaning in the door frame. “Hazards of the job I suppose, the price one must pay for being quite possibly the best confectioner who ever lived, not easy being a genius and all that. Now, anyone know a really good magic trick? A musical number? Sarah, how's your juggling?"

Sarah, who felt as if she’d been juggling keeping an eye on Charlie’s well-being, dealing with Mr. Wonka’s unparalleled levels of nonsense and just plain trying to keep her head attached to her shoulders for pretty much the entire day as it was, forbore to comment.

“I don’t think it even has eyes,” she said, instead.

“Or ears,” added Charlie. He had leaned forwards for a better look and was watching the Glok from quite close to the open doorway, while Sarah kept a firm hold on the back of his sweater. “Or a brain- I think it just… wants sugar.”

“Well, it shares all _that_ with a pretty large portion of the population.” Mr. Wonka mused. “One million sugar-power’s a lot of calories, though- let’s see if it can sniff us out. Hold on...”

He touched the power gauge under the cruise-control, sliding it carefully downwards. The Elevator slowed by fractions, inching closer to the Glok. The shambling mass quivered as the Elevator got close, balling up on itself as they stopped.

"Kind of adorable up close, _iddn’t_ he?" Mr. Wonka cooed. From here, Charlie could see little bits of taffy wrapper floating in the mess.

"Right. So, we got its attention-" Mr. Wonka gave his cane a little twirl, and Sarah noticed the blob waver a little, eyelessly following the cane as he spun it before he set it back down.

The Glok let out a rippling growl.

"Could we fit it in the Elevator?" Charlie asked, trying to size up the thing’s mass.

"Ew, no, I just had this thing cleaned," Mr. Wonka retorted.

"But... you said you hadn't used this thing in years."

"I Windexed it last night."

“Do that again,” said Sarah, suddenly. She was watching the heaving mess with narrow intent, and as Mr. Wonka turned she put out her free hand- the one that wasn’t currently occupied with stopping her son from pitching himself nose-first out of the Elevator- and halted his arm, preventing him from lowering his cane.

He blinked, then gave it a slow spin. As his fingers moved, as the cane turned, the Glok turned too, practically in sync, protrusions flubbering out towards them with a noise like a hungry keening whine. The faint glow at the tip of the cane ebbed a little stronger. It was almost always hard to tell if it _did_ glow at all, or if the purple sparks dancing within the polished sphere were really just glitter, or all in the imagination... but now it began to gleam beyond a shadow of a doubt, glimmering off the Elevator’s polished walls.

"It wants the cane!" Charlie burst out.

"I suppose it did get a taste of it in the Taffy Room," said Sarah.

"Well, it can't have it," finished Mr. Wonka, closing his eyes. He folded his arms, the glowing purple orb hooked in the crook of his elbow.

As he did so, the blob started to grow even more restless, quivering and wavering like the sea. It was beginning to growl again.

Mr. Wonka opened one eye to peek at it.

"Oh, what, you want this?" He gave his cane a little wiggle. "Fat chance, Glokkie, this is a custom-made-"

Suddenly, the Glok lurched forward, and everyone- even Mr. Wonka- yelped as the Elevator tipped from the sudden gush of runny taffy clawing inside, snatching at its floor.

Mr. Wonka jabbed the door-close button with the end of his cane, and the doors slid together with a pleasant _ding!,_ slowing as they started to compress the taffy.

"Back, back, back-" Sarah grabbed Charlie, pressing into the far corner.

"On it, on it, on it!" Mr. Wonka was rapidly pressing buttons. The Elevator backed up, pulling out a long thin stretch of chocolatey taffy before it snapped with a jerk, the rebound shaking its patrons to the floor.

"Get off!" said Mr. Wonka, trying to shake the glob of the thing that remained in the Elevator off his cane.

"MR. WONKA!" Sarah got his attention just in time, as the rest of the mass charged them.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we're about to hit some turbulence!" Mr. Wonka pressed a whole scad of buttons in succession and the Elevator rose just enough to soar over the blob. A trap-door opened overhead, and five black-handled ropes fell down.

"I'd recommend holding on!"

"You said this thing didn't have handles!" Sarah shrieked, as she grabbed one.

"These are _straps,_ Sarah, there's a big difference! Now pull this thing off me before it eats my hat!"

The small glob of Glok twisted under his arm as he slapped at it, spiralled up his shoulder and spreadeagled itself straight across his face. Sarah seized it, and pulled. It felt horribly squamous under her hands, and it stretched like a facehugger, strands grabbing for the back of his head like so many rubbery legs. Sarah yanked back with all her might, and although there was a moment of uncertainty regarding which would give way first- the goop or Mr. Wonka’s ears- it finally snapped off, nearly throwing her off her feet.

“Door!” she gasped, and Mr. Wonka hit the controls just as the mini-blob bounded off the wall and bounced right up, snatching out for his cane again. Charlie caught it mid-air with a frantic soccer punt his gym teacher would have been proud of, and it sailed through the doors and slapped into the bulk of the Glok as it hurtled after them, merging immediately back into the whole.

Sarah grabbed her strap with one hand and Charlie with the other, and the Elevator shot forwards and upwards like a startled horse. Mr. Wonka braced himself against the door, holding his cane aloft like a tour guide’s umbrella, as the Glok rampaged after its tempting purple light.

“Well, we’ve definitely riveted our audience! Now we just have to figure out exactly what we’re going to do with it.” Mr. Wonka winced as the Glok screamed behind them, and gave the Elevator’s cruise-control another kick of speed. “Right, brainstorm sesh, let’s workshop this thing. Did anyone bring a whiteboard?”

"Oh, you didn’t?" Sarah found an ounce of sarcasm in the moment.

"It's in my other coat," replied Mr. Wonka, seriously.

"Well, it's made out of bananas, jasmine, and uranium," figured Charlie, counting out the ingredients on his fingers. "Are there any opposites of those things we could use?"

"I'm afraid our shipment of muinaru isn't coming in until next week, so the uranium is out of the question." Mr. Wonka pressed a few buttons, and the Elevator turned a corner.

"It certainly wasn't fond of the fire extinguisher," Sarah recalled. "Do you have anywhere cold?"

"Of course I do! Should be a button on yourrrrr… right. But it could take a while for this thing to freeze, how are we going to keep it from running off on us?"

Charlie caught a whiff of something as they passed an intersection.

Apple.

He’d never been very good at paying attention in school. He tried, he really did, but he honestly couldn't help himself from doodling in the margins of the stained, occasionally half-filled notebooks his mother salvaged for him. The days when he didn't have a notebook were almost as tortuous as the days when the wind was in the right direction and he could smell the factory from home. On those days, he had to listen. While he loved science, mostly biology whenever it touched on what stuff- especially sweets- were made of, it was hard to hold his attention on other boring things like math and stumbling presentations on earthquakes.

But now, Charlie was thankful for one of those days in particular, a slow dull fall day where his teacher had droned on and on about-

"Bees" he said. "Bees hate bananas."

Mr. Wonka blinked.

“Charlie, you never fail to surprise me,” he said. “You’re perfectly right, dear boy, never eat a banana within twenty feet of a beehive. They can’t stand the things, well-known beekeeper fact.”

Sarah gave Charlie’s hand a proud squeeze. She was speed-reading the row of buttons set into the Elevator’s side by her right elbow. After a moment, she spotted a small one simply marked ‘THE DEEP FREEZE’ and hit it with her thumb.

“Why would they hate bananas?” she asked, as the Elevator veered immediately into a side-tunnel and began rising fast, leaving the brick-lined vaults rapidly behind them. The Glok roared after, and the sound of it squeezing its bulk into the narrower passage was unpleasantly liquid and speedy-sounding. “I mean, is it a chemical, or the color, or what?”

“I have no idea... frankly, I always felt it was a bit rude to ask them,” said Mr. Wonka. “I suppose I just always assumed it was one of those ancient family feud things, you know, one side doesn’t talk to the other for sixteen generations because Aunt Becky trod on Cousin Justine’s cat.”

He snapped his fingers and a phone dropped down, rather like an oxygen mask, bouncing on its cord before he picked it up and put it to his ear.

"Herman, contact the Bee Room and have the swarm mobilize to the Deep Freeze, please. Make sure you tell them the Glok made an inflammatory remark, might help them get riled up."

He listened to the other end, staying still as the Elevator rocked and Sarah clung to Charlie.

"Yeah, that’s a hot take, problematic but not TOO problematic. Thank yooou!"

He pulled on the phone before letting it go, and it bounced back up into the dark.

"Bees are mobilizing..." He reached into his coat and pulled out a woolly handful Charlie recognised as his bobble hat, the one he’d worn the day before _,_ and set it on his apprentice’s head.

"You'll need this, Bucket."

Mr. Wonka was true to his word. As the Elevator spiralled up through the tunnels, Charlie felt the temperature start to drop, edging down as the light became colder, harsher, more arctic. It seemed to make no difference to the Glok, which kept up a furious pace as it came roiling murderously after them, filling the tunnel wall-to-wall.

Soon, Charlie could see their breath clouding in the air, and the atmosphere around him felt as cold as the winter day which, presumably, was still passing by in the world outside, the world that was completely unaware of the madcap happenings just on the other side of the Factory gates. The Elevator soon returned to a true upright, rocketing up through the frost-rimed white tunnel.

“Mr. Wonka, can we go any faster?” he asked. He wasn’t sure- the speed and the Elevator’s constant motion made it hard to tell- but he _thought_ the Glok seemed to be getting a bit closer. Mr. Wonka nudged the cruise-control’s speed slider, but the needle was already buried in the highest side of the gauge.

“Afraid not… that’s all the juice we’ve got. No need to worry, though, I’m sure- _WHOAH,_ Bessie!” This, as the Glok lunged upwards, eating up the distance between itself and the Elevator, a tangle of grasping strands snapping out and swiping at the floor of the glass box, missing it by mere feet.

“Maybe a _teensy_ need to worry,” Mr. Wonka amended. “We’re almost there, though, I’m sure it’ll be fine...”

Sarah, her arm around her son’s shoulders, returned Charlie’s anxious glance. Even Charlie, by this point, had started to grow somewhat wary of this particular phrase.

The Glok was very, very close now.

They all looked up, just in time to see a rising brighter light bloom around them as the Elevator shot up from the tunnel out into a cavernous room, domed like a missile silo and tiled completely in pale, frosty white-blue. The air was full of tiny specks of ice, and at the very centre, a great jumble of cones and fans- a mighty towering refrigeration unit that could have squashed the Bucket shack with room to spare.

"Aaannd..." Mr. Wonka squinted, looking down and almost _through_ the Glok.

"We're through! Shut it!" he yelled, into the phone. Machinery moved below, the Elevator tunnel sealing behind them with the heavy dragging moan of a giant metal cover.

"Yes! Snowed in!" Mr. Wonka pumped his fist.

The victory was short lived though- as a rubbery stretching sound, like pulled gum, rang out anew. The Glok reached out again, and this time it found its mark. Sarah shrieked, grabbing Charlie, as blue tendrils shot up along the clear walls of the Elevator, hooking onto the top.

The Elevator groaned as it tried to keep its upwards trajectory, stuttering and popping as the poor motors were pushed to their breaking point trying to carry its passengers AND the massive Glok. A crack, dainty like a ballerina, formed just above the GREENHOUSE button. It elongated, spread, branched and met others.

"No-" said Mr. Wonka. "No, no, no-"

Sarah was frozen, only coming to when she felt Charlie bury his face in her middle. She looked up, and her eyes met Mr. Wonka’s. It was a long, agonizing moment as she saw the human gaze that met hers. Those eyes that said _I'm sorry,_ and _Forgive me,_ all in one powerless, pleading glance.

_I'll do everything in my power to keep Charlie safe today._

Time sped up as Mr. Wonka shoved his cane between the glass doors, forcing them open, and before the Glok’s taffy could pour in and cement her shoes, he grabbed her.

With no ceremony, no witty remark, no showmanship, he tossed her and Charlie out of the Elevator, and they plummeted towards the soft snow below.


	6. A Freezing Finale

“NO!” screamed Charlie, just before Sarah pulled him closer, as close as she could, wrapping her body around his. The next second, they hit the snow. The cold was shocking, a breathless winding implosion of white that was surprisingly, impossibly soft. In those first few moments Charlie could see nothing, but he heard and _felt,_ in his bones, a terrible high splintering _CRRRK-CRSHHH_ as the Elevator finally gave up under the incredible strain. Sarah ducked her head and pulled her cardigan over the both of them, as chunks of glass rained down into the snow, sending fragments skittering across the frozen tiles.

At last, the clatter of falling glass died down and stopped. Charlie was up almost at once, nearly waist-high in the snowbank they’d landed in, wading and tripping through the powder with no regard to where he was putting his feet. Sarah shook ice and glass from her clothes and stumbled to catch up, steadying him just as he slipped.

“Charlie!”

“Where is he?” Overhead, the Glok roared on an angry, cheated note, turning about blindly as its heavy extrusions pawed in the air where the Elevator had last been, rending the remains of the track apart at right-angles as if the girders were nothing more than bits of a kids’ construction set.

 _“Mr. Wonka!”_ called Charlie, frantically. There was no reply. The floor of the silo was vast and mostly featureless, for the part that wasn’t taken up by the Glok’s spreading bulk. Snow and stacked blocks of ice around the central refrigerator machinery, a waste of heaped snowbanks and ankle-deep powder. Amongst the glitter of frost and tile, the glassy remains of the Elevator were so hard to spot that it was almost as if the whole thing had simply vanished without a trace.

Charlie shielded his eyes against the snowglare, scanning desperately. Sarah was right behind him, and she saw him slow to a stop, as if there was simply nothing else he could think of to do… and clap his hands, hesitantly, twice.

For a long, horrible moment, nothing happened. Charlie stood, his small frame trembling with cold and dread, trying to look everywhere at once, but it was Sarah who clutched his shoulder all of a sudden, and pointed.

There, quite close to them, from a mound of drifted snow, there was a faint, answering purple glow.

Ignoring the sound of rending metal overhead Charlie slipped and tripped his way through drifts and across the icy floor. He barely felt the sting as he dug into the snow. His small hands were used to the sharp slice of cold, a constant complaint through years of not having properly fitting mittens... or any mittens at all.

Sarah knelt in the snow next to him, digging just as frantically. The two Buckets only paused to breathe and wipe their faces on their sleeves, until the dome of the cane finally emerged into the harsh white light.

Charlie wrapped his hands around the cane. "If it's here, he must be close by!"

He pulled- then froze. A hand was still gripping the other end of the cane, a violet cuff poking out of the snow.

"Mr. Wonka!" Sarah left Charlie to hold onto the cane as she dug anew, and soon Mr. Wonka’s face emerged in the white, his eyes closed and mouth slightly open.

Sarah had ducked, setting her ear to his chest, when suddenly he jumped, flinched, and gave a tremendous cough.

"Great googly- _moogly_ , am I going to be feeling that tomorrow," he groaned, covering his eyes with one arm while the other dipped into the snow to search for his top hat.

“Let’s just try to get there, first,” managed Sarah, reaching out to help as he sat up, stiffly, snow sliding from his shoulders in a mini-avalanche. Her stomach felt weak with relief. Charlie, his eyes as big as saucers, looked very much as if he would have happily yielded to his first glad impulse and tackled his mentor for a hug, if he hadn’t been left holding the cane.

A terrible growl rumbled from just above. Sarah staggered to her feet in the slew of snow they’d dug out, trying to support Mr. Wonka, who made it to one knee with difficulty. The Glok towered over them, craning down hungrily towards the tantalizing purple glow.

“Charlie...” Mr. Wonka, eyes fixed on the looming beast, tried to stand, but couldn’t quite make it. Leaning heavily on Sarah’s arm, he held out his hand urgently for the cane. “Quick, give it here.”

Charlie, still gripping the cane with both hands, took a tiny step backwards.

“Charlie?”

As the Glok snaked a hungry tendril down towards them, Charlie jumped back, slid down the snowbank, and started to run. He was off like a rabbit before either Sarah or Mr. Wonka could even make a grab for him, tumbling through the drifts, righting himself and bolting away from the two adults as fast as his small legs would take him, the glowing cane held aloft.

“CHARLIE!”

The Glok let out a deep bassy sound, making the icicles far overhead tremble as Charlie slid across a patch of ice towards a shelf of product. Getting the best running start he could, he dropped, his small thin form easily passing under the pallet just as one of the Glok’s tendrils whizzed over his head, slamming into the chiller boxes and absorbing whatever treats were inside. Charlie scrambled and slipped to his feet, and took off again.

 _“CHARLIE!”_ Mr. Wonka was still trying to get to his feet, but each attempt to stand on more than one leg made him wince in pain. His weight kept Sarah pinned too, helpless to do more than just follow Charlie’s path with her eyes as she clung to her son’s teacher.

“Sarah, forget me, you’ve gotta go-”

Charlie wound another corner, the soles of his worn shoes sheering along the glassy surface. At least his mom and Mr. Wonka were okay now… and all he had to worry about was what _he_ was going to do. He gripped the cane like a vice as his feet slipped out from under him, crying out as his shoulder hit the packed snow hard. The Glok came ever closer, and he knew he wasn’t going to last much longer like this.

_Think, Charlie, THINK-_

With moments to look around, he saw that he had skidded right next to a frozen piece of machinery, something intended for who-knows-what with a squat boiler and long gloved metal arms overhead, strung with giant, glistening icicles that hung like pearl bracelets. He twisted the cane in his hand, holding it like a baseball bat before giving the frozen metal of the boiler a good _WHAP!_

The arms overhead shook, and Charlie took off again. Behind him, he could hear the Glok roaring as the icicles rained down on it in a sudden hail.

All at once, sliding around a new corner, he spotted a mop of orange, a bright startling jolt in this landscape of blue ice.

“Perdia, push!”

“I’m pushing!” Herman’s colleague cried, as the two Oompa-Loompas forced open the heavy warehouse door. Charlie almost thought he could hear… buzzing?

 _“Run, kid!”_ screamed Perdia, as the Glok shook off the last of the icicles like an immense porcupine shedding quills and slammed straight past them into the rack of shelves Charlie had just rounded, knocking it sideways. Charlie, who didn’t need telling, dashed along the aisle as the entire rack collapsed into the next above his head, just squeaking out between them as both structures hit the floor with a bone-shaking thud. The wreckage of shelves and boxes was immediately oozed over and subsumed under the Glok’s gigantic form, and as if it gathered an extra kick from the new fuel, it bunched up and shot forwards, munching up the distance at Charlie’s heels.

There was nothing else to hide behind. Hugging the cane to his chest, Charlie threw the last of his speed and energy into a mad sprint, without a plan or even any clear direction in mind beyond just away. His ribs were aching with the effort and his breath was agonizingly short, and the buzzing in his ears was nearly loud enough now to drown out the Glok’s ghastly roar.

The next second, the inevitable happened. His foot slipped, he tried to keep his balance, stumbled, and went down. Rolling over in the powdery snow, he just had time for one heartstopping glimpse of the enormous beast bearing down on him, but then-

The buzzing swept down behind him, deep and sonorous, and Charlie realised the sound wasn’t in his ears at all just before the swarm of bees whipped into view, streaming around him on all sides, a battalion of thousands of tiny brown-gold bodies with a single speck of glorious purple-gold at their head. He knelt up in the snow and felt the cane being tugged gently upwards out of his hands, pulled firmly from his numbed fingers by hundreds of the clustering bees as they overtook him and soared up towards the Freezer’s icy dome.

The swarm rushed all around him, the strange featherlight surging tickling feeling of thousands of furry bodies and wings brushing harmlessly by him all at once, a living blizzard all around him one moment and gone the next. The cane’s purple glow rose high up and banked over him, lifted by the belly of the swarm, and the Glok twisted ravenously and went roaring off after it.

“Charlie!” His gaze was pulled by his mother, who had left Mr. Wonka- at his insistence- on the snowbank. “Oh, Charlie-” Her arms were around him, and Charlie shivered as he hugged her tight. “Don’t you _ever_ do anything like that again! Are you alright?”

“Just a second, Mom-” Charlie moved his chin so he could see. “Look!”

The horde of bees was circling around and around the cooling tower in the center of the room, a massive stack of blocky blueish-grey protrusions. The Glok was making all manner of sounds, trying to pursue the purple treasure in lieu of the freezing cold touch of the machine.

“It’s still chasing the cane...” murmured Sarah.

“They’re making it wind itself around the freezer!” Charlie watched, hopping on his toes for warmth. “If they can get it to stretch thin enough, maybe it’ll freeze solid!”

Just a few feet away, Mr. Wonka was waving away Herman and Perdia, hand still holding his ribs as he stared at the mass twirling around and around the machinery.

“At this rate, it’ll clog the pipes,” Perdia commented. Mr. Wonka lit up.

“Buckets! Over here!” He waved them over, and before either could speak he held up his hand, then pointed towards the tower.

“That’s the main refrigeration unit. At the back, there’s an emergency control panel, but it’s too high up for someone like a Loompa or Charlie here to reach- no offense.”

“None taken,” replied a small chorus.

“Sarah...” Mr. Wonka reached into his coat and pulled out the skeleton key. “I need you to open it up and turn the freezer on full blast.” Their eyes met as he held out the key to his entire factory, his biggest secret, the thing he loved the most, to her. “Can you do that for me?”

Sarah nodded, holding out her own hand, and with only a moment’s pause he took a breath and placed the key in her palm.

There was no time for ceremony, or for her to say any part of what she felt- she just squeezed her son’s shoulder with her habitual touch that was so much silent praise and warmth and worry all at once, then hitched up her sodden skirt, and ran.

The Glok was slowly winding itself into a massive spiral, up and around the cooling tower’s convoluted height. The tangle of vents and temperature control units was starting to resemble nothing as much as a huge, unpleasantly sticky-looking blue ice-cream cone, the shiny taffyish surface of the monster pulsing as it oozed up and around and around, trying to catch up with the maddening swarm that flew loops and loops around and about its cumbrous bulk. It paid absolutely no attention to Sarah as she slipped and sprinted across the floor to the back of the tower, where she quickly spotted a fine mesh grille in the blue-grey metal. It was set into the surface without a millimeter’s purchase and half-covered with the slimy taffy, but she could still make out the thin slot down one side, and before any more of it could be obscured she swiped the skeleton keycard hard down through the slot.

There was a pleasant _beep!_ and a _hiss,_ and the grille disengaged and popped a little out of the metal, giving her just enough room to get her fingers behind it. Tucking the precious keycard into her shirt pocket, she wrenched at the grille as hard as she could, scrabbling at the edges, wrapping her hands in her cardigan sleeves to ward off the cold bite of the freezing metal. Heaving it half-free, she had to fight against the slime the rest of the way until it came loose. She dropped it at once, leaving it dangling from drooping threads of goop that stretched and snapped like pizza cheese.

There were quite a few complicated-looking controls in the recess beneath, buttons and switches, but the only one Sarah had eyes for was at the bottom, a big old-fashioned dial with a colored scale, the arrow currently set in mid-blue, just a quarter of a turn away from deep-blue zero. Figuratively crossing her fingers, toes, and anything else she could think of, she grabbed and twisted it with a series of satisfying ratcheting clicks, until it was as low as it could possibly go.

The cooling tower shuddered. Sarah backed away, casting her eyes upwards. For a moment, the vibrations almost threatened to shake the Glok off- before they stopped.

The huge central machine fell quiet and still. Charlie opened his mouth to speak.

Suddenly, the cooler let out a roar. The floor trembled. Snow whipped up into the air in a small blizzard as the tower let out a burst of air at ground-level. Sarah’s hair and skirt flapped madly in the freezing gale. Charlie had to plunge his hands into his armpits, and Mr. Wonka let out a full-bodied shiver as the temperature in the room suddenly plummeted.

“I always hated this room!” Herman shouted over the roar of the blizzard, as his small shivering form clung to Perdia.

“Look!” Charlie pointed upwards. The Glok was beginning to slow down, frost forming in streaks along its surface as its winding and thrashing began to grow sluggish.

“It’s slowing!” said Mr. Wonka, his eyes fixed on the vast thing, while he kept his arm around Charlie. The bees hummed louder, the swarm only speeding up, and Charlie faintly remembered that the way bees combated the cold was to just exercise faster.

“It’s slowing, but it’s not stopping! Mom!”

Over by the tower, Sarah had managed to stay upright, her entire body trembling as the bitter cold blew in her face. She could barely hear her son over the roar of the cooler.

“Mr. Wonka, what do we do?” Charlie turned to his mentor, eyes wide, chilled cheeks starting to flush as purple as Mr. Wonka’s coat.

Mr. Wonka said nothing. Horrifyingly, he said nothing.

“I- I don’t know, Charlie,” he said, softly, at last. “For the first time in my life, I have to admit... I’m at something of a loss.”

“What do you mean, you’re at a loss?” demanded Perdia, from behind them. Her teeth were chattering, and she sounded about as aghast as Charlie felt. Mr. Wonka seemed to welcome the interjection, or maybe he was just glad that somebody had said _something._ He rounded on her, lurching like a giraffe with three legs, nearly taking Charlie down with him as the boy tried to support his weight.

“I mean, I’m at a loss, Perdia! I have no idea what to do next! None! _Zip!_ Not a clue! Should I say it louder? Do you wanna sing about it?”

“Did you hit your head?” retorted Perdia.

“How would we _tell?”_ shivered Herman.

The freezer was humming overtime, cold air still belching from every vent, enveloping the Glok in an icy mist. Still, it kept moving, its whole mass marbled with frozen white, almost reaching the domed ceiling. Its roar had taken on a horrible rasping, crunching quality, like ice floes grinding against each other under pressure, and the tentacle it swung out at the swarm was a half-frozen club that smashed into the wall and raked a whole swathe of tiles from the surface, cracking them like popcorn and sending fragments raining down in a spill of plaster, ceramic and ice.

At the base of the now-entirely-Glok-coated tower, Sarah ducked and shielded her head as the sound of the impact reverberated around her. She made a start back across the floor, towards the others-

-but something, some tiny inside voice that had been shouting louder and louder ever since it had become clear to her that the cold wasn’t working, slowed her, made her turn, hesitating, back to the controls.

She stared at the big dial. Something Charlie had said, what felt like _days_ ago now, that morning. In the Mixing Room, where this whole mess had started.

_I was thinking maybe if we add some things that are hot, then add more cold things, maybe they get used to the heat?_

She’d been confused, at the time- confused, and a little suspicious- that Mr. Wonka had just rolled with the idea. Charlie, with his fifth-grader’s understanding of these concepts, with his ideas gleaned from half-heard lessons and old comics and the galaxy of ideas inside his head, might not have known better, but any grownup knew the world didn’t work like that. It didn’t…

...but in here, _in here,_ where candy-corn grew from seed and sugar-glass butterflies could fly, and where an army of _bees_ had just mobilized to save her son’s life...

Sarah set her jaw, and reached out for the big dial.

“All right, you big sack of slime,” she muttered. “Let’s see if you get used to _this.”_

She twisted, sending the arrow click-click-clicking all the way up through the blue and up and over into the bright red end of the gauge, burying it as far as it would go.

“Sarah, what are you-” Mr. Wonka’s voice was the last thing she heard, before the machine let out another loud roar, a bassy knell that went through her chest and shook her to the core.

The effect felt much like when one turned a shower quickly from cold to hot. A millisecond of gradual change before a sudden deluge of heat rushed into the room. Immediately, it was summer, the air around the cooling tower wavering in time with the gyrations of the Glok as it was cooked. The room smelled like blue raspberry… and jasmine.

The roar of engines quickly turned to a slosh of water as the snow beneath their feet melted almost instantly, covering the floor in a layer of lukewarm water that soaked through Charlie’s thin shoes.

“Oh, this is better,” Herman found the time to say, before the Glok cut him off. It was screaming on a ghastly gurgling note, writhing, sliding downwards like it was melting with the rest of the room, a slow avalanche of sticky, runny taffy. Sarah’s feet splashed in it as she took a few more steps back.

“Look!” Charlie pointed upwards. Far towards the top of the mess a bubble, like a pocket of air in a pizza crust, was forming. It popped, and was quickly replaced by another, then another, and then more and more up and down the melting surface until-

The Glok gave a low, oozing moan.

“HIT THE DECK!” Mr. Wonka cried, and for the second time that day Charlie felt arms around his waist as he brought the boy to the ground and turned away, shielding him with his body as the warm water soaked the back of Charlie’s sweater.

Sarah, for her part, just had the presence of mind to snatch the metal grille up out of the goop at her feet. Sliding down behind it as if it was an awkward square shield, she ducked her head and tried to fold as much of herself into its cover as she could.

The Glok gave a massive, top-to-bottom heave as it was flash-fried from the inside out, great wobbling blue bubbles expanding and bursting out everywhere like out-of-control party balloons. Howling horribly, it swelled up all at once like a mushroom cloud, and then, with a thundering, squelching, and very final...

**POP**

...it tore apart.

Bits of fried taffy rained down on all of them as the cooling machine gave out, giving one last burst of heat. Charlie cried out as he felt large chunks of Glok splat down around them. After a silence that felt like it lasted much longer than it actually did, everyone looked up.

The room was plastered in melted hunks of sky-blue, fudge-marbled taffy, which didn’t move aside from settling into the nooks and crannies where it had landed. The first thing Charlie saw was Mr. Wonka, soaked through and covered in a sticky film. His face stayed utterly stunned for moment before it brightened, and he let out a loud _“YEEHAW!”_ that echoed off the walls of the devastated, formerly-frozen Deep Freeze.

“My STARS, was that a show! Well done!” He clapped, stretchy bridges of taffy forming each time his hands pulled away from each other. “Well done! Great work, everyone! Sarah, you are BRILLIANT!”

He paused. “Sarah?”

He tried to get to his feet again. With Charlie helping, he was able to stand, but he still had to hold his ribs with one hand, and hunched over a little. “Sarah?”

“MOM?” Charlie cried.

“I’m here!” From the mess that was still settling around the cooling tower, a movement and a dull squelchy _clanng._ A small part of the goop stretched and parted like putty, as Sarah heaved the grille from her and staggered free. The cover had protected most of her head and shoulders, but from the elbows down she was completely splashed and splattered with melted Glok, and at first she seemed dazed, turning about as if she wasn’t quite sure where she’d ended up. As soon as she spotted them, she shook off her shock, and broke into a run.

A little way off, Perdia and Herman popped up from behind a dented chest freezer. Like most Oompa-Loompas, their timing in the moment had been impeccable, and they were damp and bewildered but mostly unscathed. Now, they were just in time to see Sarah pelt across the last few feet to Charlie and Mr. Wonka, skidding on the slippery puddled tiles, and if Sarah reached first or Charlie or both it was a matter of a heartbeat, before they were holding each other tightly.

Sarah rocked her son back and forth in the sheer blessed relief of the moment, and then without a pause they both at once reached out and pulled Mr. Wonka into a rather sticky, utterly joyful hug.

Mr. Wonka had just been turning away when they grabbed him and he was yanked in. He froze, blinking as if he had just walked face first into a spider’s web. Perdia gestured forward, as if to say _Go on, ya dummy!_

He closed his eyes, and hugged Sarah and Charlie back.

He’d forgotten how nice it felt.

“Ow-ow, my ribs, Charlie, ow-” After a moment, he pushed them gently away. It took a few attempts, as the taffy rubber-banded and snapped back, bringing the group into a second unplanned hug before Perdia and Herman stepped in to help them peel themselves apart. The horde of bees overhead descended gracefully like an open parachute, coming to a rest at their eye level.

“Your Majesty- forgive me for not bowing,” Mr. Wonka said, before nudging Charlie.

“Oh!” The boy bowed at the waist. The Queen, emerging from the cloud of her workers, snickered a buzz that almost sounded like a laugh, and dipped her tiny antennae.

The swarm sang a new song, as Mr. Wonka put his arm around Charlie.

“Oh, yes, the Glok really DID say that about your apple honey, so _insensitive_. Anyone could tell you were going for the taste of a honeycrisp apple, none of that Granny Smith nonsense.”

He waved his hand dismissively and the swarm buzzed a laugh before speaking again in a quiet hum.

“Why, thank you, I suppose I did save us a-” Mr. Wonka stopped dead as the Queen moved right past him to Sarah, bowing to her once they met. The swarm buzzed, and dipped in a bow as well.

Mr. Wonka frowned, and Charlie just giggled. He looked up at his mentor, grinning ear-to-ear, as his mom curtseyed back to the Queen. She was getting better at it, despite her soaking clothes. Mr. Wonka looked as if he was about to say something else, but at that moment the swarm above their little group parted and his cane dropped from the cloud of tiny bodies almost right on top of his head, and he had to juggle to catch it.

 _“Thank_ you,” he told the swarm, huffily, before his expression softened, became honest, unaffected. “I... I mean it. All of you.”

Sarah touched him on the arm, feeling in the pocket of her blouse. As he turned back to her, she pulled out the keycard, shaking a reluctant strand of goop from it before she handed it back to him.

He paused, then smiled. A genuine one. “Thank you,” he said again. “I really do appreciate it.”

She could see the plain gratitude in his face as he tucked the card back into his coat. A wall was gone from between them now, and they could both feel it. Some obstacle of assumption had been dismantled... on both sides.

“I… suppose this wasn’t the best first day, was it?” Mr. Wonka looked between Sarah and Charlie. “I suppose even experienced chocolatiers still have things to learn. Sarah, I hope...” He paused, wringing a hand on his cane. “I hope SOMEHOW I’ve proven that I _am_ serious about all this, and...”

He gave Charlie a one-armed hug, a pat on the shoulder. “I gotta say, Bucket, if this is how your FIRST mix-up worked out, it can only get better from here, eh?”

Charlie’s grin faded. He looked up at the stained, pockmarked walls of the dome, the cooling pools of Glok goop everywhere, the battered turrets of the cooling tower and the wreckage of shelves dripping with melted product.

“Mr. Wonka… I… I’m-”

 _“Hdshhdsjhht,”_ pronounced Mr. Wonka, somehow, cutting Charlie off with an upheld hand as he knelt, stiffly and with a slight squelch, next to his apprentice. “I know that look. Charlie, I told you that I love this factory more than anything else in the world. Any _thing._ Things can be rebuilt. My Elevator...” Briefly, he bowed his head. “My Elevator can be rebuilt. People can’t. At least,” he added, thoughtfully, “not after a certain window, ‘cause then it’s suddenly ‘necromancy,’ and everyone gets _really_ judgey-”

He shook his head, batting the digression away with his hand as if it was a bothersome fly. “Listen, the point I’m trying to make, is that people- that you- are more important to me than any… _stuff.”_

He hesitated, staring down into the dome of his cane, rubbing specks of slime and water and pollen from the surface with absent swipes, until the purple crystal started to shine under his thumb.

“And _I’m_ sorry,” he finished, at last, “that I ever made you feel otherwise. I’m the best chocolate-maker in the world, Charlie, not to… uh...”

“Toot your own kazoo?” suggested Charlie. He was starting to smile again.

Mr. Wonka let out a snort and grinned back. It was one of his proper grins; big, involuntary, slightly mad, and truly kind.

“Yeah.” He ruffled the boy’s hair, then gingerly pulled his hand away before it could stick. “But, you know, if today proved anything, it’s that I’ve got a lot to learn about being a teacher. I...”

He was cut off by another hug, his face blanking again in surprise. Sarah, watching from a little distance, hid a chuckle behind her hand.

"I'm really glad you chose me, Mr. Wonka," said Charlie, softly.

Wonka looked up at Sarah, smiled, then hugged the boy back, earnestly, burying his face in Charlie’s shoulder as his apprentice did the same.

"I'm glad I chose you too, Charlie."

The moment was interrupted by a bright clanging coming from Mr. Wonka’s coat, accompanied by a vibration that made Charlie’s whole body jitter. Mr. Wonka leaned back, digging deep into his jacket before pulling out an analog brass alarm-clock, which jittered and jived in his hand. He frowned, then tucked his other hand into his jacket, pulling out the pocket watch and opening it.

"Oh, my goodness, six already? Ah, silly me, thing’s still set to Oklahoma time. Charlie, we're due for the press!"

"What?!" Charlie’s shoulders dropped. With the help of his cane, Mr. Wonka got to his feet.

"We have to tell the world that you won the grand prize! If we take the roller-cart-coaster we should get there just in time!"

“Is it far?” Sarah broke in. Mr. Wonka shook his head. He was checking the clock against his pocket-watch. Having compared them to his satisfaction, he tucked the clock away and spun his watch like a yo-yo on its chain, sending the slime adhering to its case flying like a centrifuge, before hooking it neatly back into his fob pocket and giving Charlie a wink.

“No, not at all! In fact, we’re practically right on top of-”

“Then we are _walking,”_ said Sarah, firmly, taking both of their hands, “and the world can wait.”

**~END~**


End file.
